9/11

[h3adrush]

hmm this is odd, my aunts b-day is 9/11, and my brother's grandfather died 9/11/01, but in a hospital bed, and his birthday is 9/10[grandfathers].

lets see i was off work i think, ive ruthlessly killed many brain cells since so its a little foggy, got up watched the news with the family. my dad drug us down to the gas station to fill up 20+ cans of gas.. =], and loaded the guns. i remember that on any irc channel i knew of that thats all that was talked about for weeks following.

here is something interesting my boss called our house crying uncontrollably because of what had happened and got teary eyed every time it was discussed for a good number of months after the events, but today he came into work and asked why we had the flag half mast.....

personally i wasnt really affected besides knowing that it was an attack on my countrymen, life for me hasnt changed.

[astcell]

A co-worker of mine had to be at the Pentagon for a meeting on 9/10/2001. She was there, and was scheduled to leave on 9/11. The meeting ran late. They asked folks to come back on 9/11 to finish the meeting, and to reschedule their flights home. They did.

On 9/11 she was in the meeting, but she happens to be a smoker. She left the building to have a cigarette. While sitting outside, the plane strikes the Pentagon. Nine of our co-workers perished.

Since she was outside smoking, she survived. So much for the argument that smoking kills.

But there is more. I hope you are sitting down. It turns out that she had cancelled her return flight to be at the Pentagon for the meeting. The return flight was the same plane which crashed into the Pentagon. Too, too eerie.

[hackajar]

I was late getting into work. When I got there, everyone was in the cafiteria gathered around the TV. Someone passing by said "WTC was hit, hit big". I first thought that China was finally going after us (well, the whole satelite thing).

I was working for Dell at the time. Since the FAA grounded all the planes, that ment freight as well. Call volume was low (tech support), but those who did call in were bitching about parts not arriving. Luckly my sup didn't object to me cursing out these idiots when they called.

I wish I could say I saw alot of empithy surounding it, but it was more of a 50/50. Vegas was a ghost town because of what happend, and while we had blood drives by afternoon on site at work that day, the weeks that followed people were bitter in general, lashing out at new york'er cause the casino's layed of 60% of the work force within days.

It's kinda sad to see people in such disarray, I only hope that people like you (all that posted) are in greater number then what I have seen locally.

[octalpus]

I've been sucked in by all your posts, and I've decided to go ahead and post, even though I originally planned not to.

Generally, I'm not up in the morning, but I had a dentist appt on the morning of 9/11. This was rather memorable, as I HATE going to the dentist, and this was going to be my first time seeing one in quite a few years. I hit snooze a few times, then finally grabbed my laptop and tried to wake up. When I hopped on IRC, there were way more people than I'd usually see in the mornings. It took me a minute or two to piece together the discussion from the replies that I was seeing. Intrigued, I flipped on the TV, and called Kryonik over. Staring at the image of the first tower burning, I thought "Huh. That's... odd." Still, it didn't occur to me as anything other than an accident, other than perhaps a quick thought in the back of my mind. A tragedy, surely, but catastrophic accidents happen now and then... this would be one to remember. After a minute or so, the second plane hit. I thought they were just showing a replay again. Then they panned back, and you could see both towers burning. That's when I realised "That's no fucking accident". We sat there on the edge of the bed for quite a few minutes, just staring at the TV.

I called my dentist to make sure she was still seeing patients, then called my mom, who was still asleep and hadn't heard. I decided to go on ahead to my appt, as it wasn't going to change anything if I just sat in front of the TV all day. I ended up needing a root canal, so when I came back, I was on nice drugs. It gave a very surreal feeling to the whole thing, and almost made it seem like it was just a dream.

How did I commemorate the day? With a visit to the dentist, oddly enough. It occured to me that I hadn't been since then, so for the last couple weeks, I'd been meaning to make an appt. A couple days ago, I started getting a throbbing pain in a tooth, so I couldn't put it off any longer, and the first they could see me was today. So once again, I'm sitting in a drug-induced haze, which gives the whole day a surreal feeling. Just an odd coincidence, I think. Trivial, surely, but to me at least, it's sort of odd. Of course, that could just be the drugs talking...

[skroo]

At the time, I lived in the room with the only TV in the house. I was awoken by one of my roommates rushing it, telling me to get the hell up and turn the TV on. Still half-asleep, I had no idea of what was going on or the urgency in her voice: as the first images came through, I thought this was her making a joke at the expense of my love of sci-fi, that we were watching a preview of a remake of Escape From New York.

That early in the morning, it took a couple of minutes to sink in. Watching as the second airplane hit, I remembered that I had already nearly lost one friend and actually lost another to terrorism some years previously, and had become relatively used to living with it - but had never seen anything on this scale. Things like this didn't happen, and especially not in America. It was simply unfathomable. And my roommate - a native New Yorker living in Southern California - couldn't speak. She still had family there. Fortunately, she didn't lose anyone.

I'll leave it there for now; I think most of my other emotions and opinions have already been stated by most other folks.

[Shatter]

My grandma's birthday is 9/11

Coincidentally enough, that's also Derf's b-day.

All he said, somberly, was "All my birthdays for the rest of my life are going to suck because of this."

[Ricky1146]

Where i was

Where i was at during the 9/11 was in school. Sophmore year, then this woman came on the loudspeaker. "And said the trade center was hit, i looked in shock and no one else in class seemed to really care. I remember that during my 3rd hour i told a friend i bet it's bin laden i just reasonably thought it. Then i think it was dan rathers came on. Then later said didn't osama say he loved planes? Everyone in a way coped differently in class then i did i felt. Like wanting revenge, and figuring out who did it.

After Second hour everyone was just talking and watching news and one thing that came up in 3rd hour french class, was the idea everyone thought later. And connected the 9/11 idea i don't recall much more but that morning when it happened My grandma's birthday is 9/11 and she said, boy this is a way to remember my birthday. I think i donated about 50 dollars or more to all the funds that were going around. That day i think was when i was most patriotic and wanted to fight back. That is what i remember

[russ]

Wow!

I'm terribly impressed by everyone here. Thank you all for the stories!

I was on my way to work listening to talk radio (Hugh Hewitt) when he stopped what he was saying and started talking about a "plane hitting the first tower". Like Kraa, I was working in Denver at the time, so I wasn't quite sure what was going on.

When I got to work a few minutes later, we switched on the big screens in the NOC and watched in horror as the 2nd plane crashed into the other tower.

Like everyone else on here, we watched for hours in disbelief.

[audit]

So many thoughts

I remember being at work for 3 hours and listening to the radio while I configured a couple new firewalls when I THOUGHT I heard that a plane had hit the 1st tower, now I had to clear my head for a minute so I went and refilled my coffee cup when the owner of the company comes out of his office and asks if we had a TV setup somewhere. I asked him if he had heard what happened just to make sure that I wasn't missing something or was listening to some joker on the radio, he said that his wife had just called and told him what happened.

So we all headed up to the conference room and turned on the TV just as the second plane hit. After hearing about the 3rd plane hitting the pentagon, I got a sick feeling in my gut as my Uncle was supposed to be there that day for some NSA meeting or something, turned out that he skipped the meeting and went out and played golf with a couple co-workers that were there also. My aunt was going nuts when I called her because she couldn't get in touch with him and then he calls on the other line and tells her that things are OK and what he was doing.

My immediate boss then told me to get back to work and if anything else happend, he'd let me know because me watching the TV wasn't doing any good and the firewalls wern't going to get configured on there own. At that time I felt that I had to go home to be with my wife and kids but was told if I left, I was fired. Now in my area, jobs are tight to find so I had to stay but my wife and kids came to my office to be with me because they felt safer.

To this day, I still feel anger from what happened 2 years ago. A great ammount of children are going to be growing up without both parents, lives were affected forever, jobs are gone and the IT sector has really taken a major shit since then, I've had 4 jobs since then, companies just don't stay in business anymore. I lost the job I had when this all happened about 2 weeks later and they blammed Sept 11th for it and the other 3 companies have done the same thing.

IMHO, I've always said, let's just blow the hell out of the countries that do this and build on them, create more jobs for the people who were affected by this.

audit

[Shatter]

As usual, I'm a little different.

I woke up on my friends couch (Derf, the DOC bartender from Defcon 8). The day before I had pack a duffle bag and drove 100 miles to a new job. This was to actually begin a new life for me.

I had to be at work by 9am for training class, and ws awake by 7:10. I flipped on teh tv, and saw the fire in tower one. I knew "this wasn't right". As I'm watching, and they're talking, plane 2 hit. This was very bad.

I picked up the phone, called the GF at teh time, told he rto get to my moms house, and stay there. Get there now before everyone else finds out what's going on.

I called my moms house, told them to stay in, load the guns, and keep an eye on the news. Things could get very bad. They asked what i was going to do, and I said "I've gota job to go to, and training to complete. I'm not letting this bull shit affect my life"

My thought went out to Nikki the Fed (Pentagon) and Ghost Writer & AbbyNrml (NYC) as well as the rest of the Moloch crew. I knew I'd hear form them when I could. All my other NY friends are in West New York.

I went to work, and one of teh sup's called everyone together and said "This is bad. Get the fuck out of here if you have family. They are more important than this job. Go deal with things." 3/4 of teh dept left or never showed up. One of the guys in my training class was from NYC, and all his family was there. He went home."

I focused on my training, did what I needed to do. I drove my car (101 was deserted) and it was weird not to see the planes, as Derf lived next to SFO.

Beyond that, I did my thing, remained aware of what was hapning in my general area, and I didn't worry. I never felt the need, and I wasn't about to let this cage my way of life. If I had, that would be like letting them win in my book.

Fuck them.

They will not make me scared. I will not worry. They do not have the ability to frighten me. The worst they could do is kill me, and another will take my place. If they destroy, we will rebuild, then we will bomb them.

They will never make me fear.

[renderman]

My story starts a day earlier.

I was working for a little IT shop at the time and on Monday the 10th we went onsite to Red-Deer (bout an hour and a half drive south) for a couple days of a network rebuild on live servers (fun!).

The 10th went by with us working till about 10pm. At this point we went for some food and beers in the pub at the hotel we were staying at, just across the street. A few beers into everyone and discussion turns to politics.

My boss, and another co-worker and I were sitting around chatting about all sorts of things. My boss and I never saw eye-to-eye on much. He ended up asking me why I was always so paranoid. I told him of the very plausible scenario of a modern version of George Orwells, Emmanual Goldstien character in '1984' being created as an excuse to take away everything (rights, liberty, weapons, etc). Prophetic statement number one.

The topic came up later about the proposed missle defense shield and the perceptions that it was a 'make work' project for a slowing military industrial complex. I pointed out that ballistic missles are probobly one of the hardest methods of weapons delivery; shooting at something half way around the world is'nt easy. I said that if a 'rogue nation' wanted to do more damage, they'd just have to smuggle a bomb into the states, assemble it, and park it outside the World Trade Center (Which had already been proven effective). Prophetic statement number 2.

I still feel sick when I think about saying that a mere 8 hours before 9/11.

I got up that morning in the hotel, did'nt check messaages, did'nt turn on the TV, and walked over to the client site.

Everything seemed realativly normal there, so I went to the server room to check /. and saw the headline 'World Trade Towers and Pentagon Attacked'. At this point I could'nt belive it and tried to check other news sites, all of which were down from the crush of visitors. Only the BBC was still up and it confirmed everything. At this point every orwellian nightmare I'd ever had came flooding back, including the nights previous statements. They expressed themselves with the immediate purge of breakfast.

My boss had his head up his ass and did'nt realize what was going on, and through out the day was cracking the whip behind us to keep working while everyone else realized the world had just changed and work was far from thier minds. It took my boss until about 2pm to stick his head up and realize why everyone was acting so strange, even then he would'nt let us try and call friends in NYC or even try and absorb it all.

He let us out for lunch and we bolted over to the pub from the night before (lots of TV's) and just sat there in stunned silence. After a few minutes a herd of local rednecks (ball cap, wife beater, pickup truck with gun rack types) came in and sat down. Within minutes there were shout's of 'kill the towel heads' and other very ignorant things when no one knew who was responsibe yet. My co-workers shaking his head at me was the only thing that kept me from trying to kill these guys for thier ignorance. My co-worker later commented that the gleam in my eye was truely one of homicide.

When the boss FINALLY let us go home I drove as fast as I possibly could making the 1.5 hour trip in 50 mnutes, in time to catch Dubya declare war on the world.

Ever since, everyone who has listened to my ranting has started beliving me alot more and does'nt dismiss me as easily.

In the most horrific way, I hate it when I'm right. It was a tragedy for humanity, but it's a bigger tragedy that it's been twisted into justification for so much wrong being done to others.

[converge]

9/11 OT$2

-- as a fore note: I have to admit to being a heartless bastard and initially thinking this thread was pretty pointless, tired and generally overplayed. I was not going to post. I did however read others replies out of curiosity and was softened by some of them... I then realized that today was, indeed, September 11th already; so here goes:

That day was a regular work day in a job that I was growingly displeased with. The morning started as any other: gathering our bearings on what tasks were in line for the day, what other systems had freshly broken, what other administrative or faculty demands had been passed up the line. My friend and former coworker gimpstax both doing this at our respective systems. I can't remember if we had talked yet about the Godsmack concert we both had tickets to for that night in Augusta, but it is quite likely. Still fresh into the day, he spoke up and said that his friend in NH just messaged him about a plane hitting one of the trade center towers.

This both struck us as odd, but couldn't have been _that_ big of a deal, right? Planes get off course, or lose control on a regular basis. Couple that with a really fucking big tower and the risks of one eventually crashing into seem... almost normal. The one thing about that department, was we _always_ had our cheapass workshop radio playing the local rock station, 24/7. (yes, we generally did not bother to shut it off nights and weekends). The radio had not even mentioned the news blip yet, so it definitely wasn't a big deal.... We both commented on how that was a little odd, turned around, and went back to what we were doing. Within minutes, gimpstax perked back up and stated that his friend just messaged back from NH that he just watched a plane hitting one of the towers during the morning news. A second plane had hit.

After some pretty fucked up dialog, we both turned back around and started looking for any kind of word from news sites about what the hell was going on. The news just showed confusion and uncertainty. I had never been a fan of CNN at all... but I have to admit that they really stepped up to the plate that morning. As soon as anything was confirmed enough for reporting, they had their site updated with the latest. The only thing that circulated my head at the moment was "one plane is a possible mistake/accident/etc... two planes is no fucking coincidence". I don't think many people were yet able or prepared to make out what was happening. Then news hit of more planes, more flames burning from government buildings, more questions... the immediate thought running through my head was sadly not empathy for those right in the middle of this mess... at ground zero of these calculated attacks. The first thing that jumped to my mind, and I still remember it quite clearly this day- "holy shit.. we are being attacked on our own soil, the masses are still in confusion about it, apparently our government is NOT behind the ball on this one at all... we are about to go to war against an immediate threat to our country that no one is prepared to fight, against an enemy that remains unknown."

The work day had changed rapidly as many people sought any and all news sources to build their puzzle, to find answers to so many questions that had popped up. Students weren't in the learning mood, faculty weren't in the teaching mood, administrators were certainly no longer as prepared to administrate. gimpstax and I spent most of our day trying to find every, ANY, cable connection that we could hook up to projects/tv sets... an odd battle to fight considering we worked at a 'Technical College'. our supervisor had brushed the entire thing off as not that big of a deal, even at lunch time when it was THE discussion of the lunch room. He _was_ kind enough to put up with gimpstax and I insisting on getting news spots up for us and others to keep updated on.

It is difficult to remember when the empathy really hit... when the sorrow of so many deaths broke through the cloud of overwhelming event. But it did. If not immediately for some, if not later that day while watching every piece that the media was prepared to filter through, or in the day to follow... the reality of what happened broke through the fictional setting that had previously described life for several hours. The bullshit 'we are strong' attitude was so visibly fake.. our country was in shock, in pain, and generally hurting. Politicians immediately added spin that the terrorists had not won... in a sense they did. Those involved in the attack achieved exactly what they wanted from it, but the story did not and does not end there. The overusage, the molesting with, the complete commercialization of the event became a long term activity for politicians, businesses, so-called music artists, among others.. and only served to degrade the meaning of the sadness unleashed on September 11th of 2001. It is quite a relief to see others express their remembrance of the day in a very real, apolitical, unbiased recount of the events as they occurred.

As for me, I could hardly believe the one year anniversary had already reached us.. last year. I still find it hard to fathom that it has been two years; my memory places it at months ago.

I never did go to the Godsmack show that night in our state capitol. None of us did.. the show was cancelled. I don't think very many of us sought out a refund either; I still hold the ticket, a small symbol, stearnly to this day.

[noid]

I woke up to a cell phone call. 'Dude, I'm not sure if I should go to work today or not", my friend said (at the time my friend worked for The Man(tm). Groggy and half asleep I said 'why the fuck wouldnt you go in? its 7something in the morning, why the hell are you calling me?'. The response I got was 'man, we're under attack someone just fucked our shit up out in New York'. I went down stairs and caught the teevee as the second tower got hit. I just kinda watched in disbelief for several hours before dragging my ass to work.

Got to work and started trying to track down the Moloch folks to make sure they were all OK and accounted for, but with phone service fucked to NY that turned out be much harder (in the end, everyone was present and accounted for). Went out to have a smoke and found the usual gaggle of middle aged secretarys out there but they were all sobbing. 'man, do you fucking believe whats happening?' I said. One of the secretaries looked at me and said, while choking back tears, 'our boss was at a meeting in the second tower when it got hit, and now he's missing' (to this day, he still is, he's one of the 1000 or whos remains were never recovered). At that point it hit me. I really couldnt focus on anything other than smoking, so I went home for the rest of the day.

That night we had our usual Tuesday 23.org get together. One of our members, Maximus was in a blind rage. Most of us couldnt even get words out, but he was able to and what he had to say pretty much summed up what was in everyones heart wether they wanted to admit it or not. At that point I got pretty mad.

To this day, I'm still mad. I'm mad my friends boss had to die because of some stupid fucking religious zealot. I'm mad at the politicians who have captialized on this for their own political gain and to further thier special intrests (I mean for fucks sake the anti-gun lobby was trying to capitalize on this, how did what happened there have ANYTHING to do with gun control?). I'm also mad that the actions of a few extremists have made the West view the middle east as nothing but a pack of filthy towelhead terrorists. I'm mad that I've had rights taken away from me because of the actions of a few individuals who weren't even Americans. I'm mad that because of their actions *I'm* now suspect, regardless of the fact that I'm a law abiding patriotic American. I'm mad because my government used this as an excuse to attack its own citizens with opressive new laws. And I'm mad because its just going to get worse.

[ch0l0man]

it happened on the second day of a new job.
i was getting ready when the news broke and showed the first plane hitting the towers.
i woke my gf and told her she had to look because it looked like something out of a movie, i figured it was just a horrible accident.
it wasnt until i got to work that i was told what had really happened.
i have never seen the freeways of la so bare after leaving work that day.
gf works right next to lax and she could not believe all the police that were there, her job sent her home for the day.
downtown la was a ghost town!

just thinking about it makes my anger boil!

[Hazard Toxic]

Alls i remember is being at my cousins house just been on the weights in the loft and remember going down the stairs and seeing my aunt devastated watching the tv at the time i was to young to really understand what had happened etc etc, But now i reliase what a very bad attack this was for no apparent reason i personally think that it has to of been the most heartbraking moments for alot of people

Please pray for all the lifes what were lost on September 11th 2001 :(