Tuesday September 11, 2001 Remembrance

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FrgMstr

FrgMstr

Just Plain Mean
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Take a moment to remember, please.

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Connectivity was much different back then. Looking back over the news that day, we tried to give folks a news source since most of the major online news source websites were overwhelmed by traffic to the point of being inoperable.
 
I remember that I was dropping my son off at the babysitter when it was first reported on.

I also remember the [H] coverage and got quite a bit of my info this way as I didn't really care for TV coverage as it was basically the same few sentences repeated over and over. This way I was better able to get new information without needing to pay attention 100% to TV.

That all said, I'm not sure that connectivity would even be much better now for an event such as that. I remember quite a few sites on the previous presidential election night which tended to be swamped or at the very least slow and they had time to prepare for extra users/views. If another event such as this happened, I'd be surprised if the regular sites still didn't end up going down under the load.
 
I remember my dad dropping me off at middle school early in the morning, our usual radio station made a very brief mention that a "small bush plane" had hit the tower 'by accident'.

Each period, things got worse and worse. My mom was flying into Atlanta that day so I was especially on edge.
 
I'll never forget that morning, or the aftermath. That day, they not only killed a lot of people, they severely damaged the US economy, and the careers of many people.

I got laid off from my systems admin position specifically because of this, and then couldn't get a follow up job quickly enough. I was doing well. I had been doing desktop support work for about 5 years, and had moved up to systems admin work, and well on my way of being a good systems admin for a good career. It destroyed my career, and I had to start over. I only got back up to systems admin work a full decade later, and, adjusting for inflation, I still have not reached the level of income I had back then, let alone moved up. All because of one morning. I will not forget how they damaged my life.
 
I was in college when this happened, I remember it as bright as day. I was watching ABC news with Peter Jennings. All news website were swamped cause I used to check the news on the computer every morning.
 
I remember my dad was bringing me to School when the frist one hit. My 8th grade home room teacher had the tv on and we all saw the second plane hit and I remember looking around at everyone and no one knew what to say. By the end of the day about 1/2 of the kids where checked out. Such a freaky day
 
It was a rather surreal day on base that day. Everyone knew things had just changed, and people would be delpoyed soon, but no one knew could have guessed. It became even more surreal/odd for people who watched it all unfold on base when they started deploying alongside people who didn't actually remember the event.
 
Was at work for a OK state agency in downtown OKC when this happened. We were watching the TV when the second plane hit the towers and everyone figured out it wasn't an accident. We got sent home not too long after that as the Murrah bombing was still fresh in the minds of all OKC residents and no one was sure how wide spread the attacks were. On the way home, saw a USPS mailman calmly delivering the mail like nothing was going on. Seemed very surreal.
 
Sobering date in history.

Things changed forever.

Unfortunately, the assholes are still out there trying to interfere with honest good peace loving people.
 
[H] was my primary source for information that day.

It was a tragic day. Things definitely changed in America that day.
 
I remember it well too. First was the shock and sadness. Then a little fear set in. At the time, I was working at a large electronics store in Austin. As a Muslim of south asian decent, I was still often mistaken for hispanic or of italian/greek decent. However, I remember clearly being asked by a customer for someone else to help them. He did not want me helping him. Shortly after, a lady with a baby also pulled me aside and asked how I was doing and if anyone was bothering me. Holding my tears in, said i was ok and thanked her for asking. Cant remember if I was active on [H] back then.
 
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I remember doing a code review with my boss. We were getting into deep discussions about algorithms and started hearing people in our office getting loud. We were annoyed. We then saw the footage and ended the code review. I remember going to lunch that afternoon - a normally busy restaurant was basically empty. When I got back from lunch, they closed our office. I saw lines at the gas station - got in one to fill my tank. Everyone else was in panic mode, so why not join them?
We had a lot of people in our office at a conference. I'm in the midwest - they were stuck in Las Vegas. They ended up renting a car and driving back (since the airlines were all grounded.) Surreal.
 
Was waking up from having my appendix removed via emergency surgery. Vaguely remember my wife crying and me telling her I was going to be fine. I eventually realized the stuff on TV wasn't some disaster movie, but the actual news. Kind of glad I was loopy on pain meds for that first week after...
 
Gasaraki_ said:
I was in college when this happened, I remember it as bright as day. I was watching ABC news with Peter Jennings. All news website were swamped cause I used to check the news on the computer every morning.
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Same here was in class (Operating Systems Admin Basics) when my buddy got a call from his GF about a plane hitting the first tower. At first we all thought it was a small plan probably from Tetterborough but then finding out it was a jumbo jet and that a second plane hit the second towers was a shock to hear. Once that class was let out we headed home. I then got a call to go down the Pentagon to assist in triage and supporting the first responders. Was a crazy sight to see, will never forget that day indeed.
 
I was working desktop support. Got to work just as they were announcing the second plane hit. None of the major or local newspaper sites could even respond, and we had a link to the Internet that absolutely rocked for the time(T-3).

CNN couldn't even keep their page up when they fell back to a single line of plain text on their home page with no hyperlinking. By the time the Towers started falling we did have CNN on in one conference room in the building.

The techs on my team were using HardOCP to stay up to date. We couldn't stream an NPR feed from anywhere in the country, but the Dallas Sports station "The Ticket" was streaming OK. They went to continuous news coverage for about a week. Between the two we were able to keep up with what was going on.

TI went to max security with single person entry being enforced on doors that had no pressure plates to enforce it. Going outside that afternoon was surreal as we were under the inbound routes for runways at Dallas Love and Addison airport, and there was not a single plane in the sky...

I remember someone at a hardware review site that I won't even visit to this day complaining about HardOCP "taking advantage of the situation to drive additional traffic to their site" by reporting on what was going on. I still haven't been back to that site since.
 
Thank you for posting the news from that day, Kyle. I was only in the 9th grade but I vividly remember the chaos, panic, and confusion. The [H] news of that day puts a timeline to it all.

I was living in Iowa at the time - about as fly-over country as you can get - and a sky empty of contrails was an eerie sight.

I can't imagine the suffering of those who had to pick up the pieces of their lives and try to move forward. Tragedies like this only serve to remind us that we're all in this together - the terrorists don't care what your political views are, they just want to kill Westerners.
 
I remember exactly what I was doing that day. I was working in the back office processing finance orders for a small computer club in the UK. Was an average day (as we are several hours ahead) up to the early afternoon when the IT guys came bursting in saying "A plane has hit the twin towers"

We were lucky that we had a decent net connection (superfast broadband was not even thought of back then for most) and we had to stream the news from an Australian news site as all the usual places (like the BBC) were totally overloaded.

Was a surreal time for sure, and as the events unfolded, you just knew the world had changed right there.
 
My father worked in one of the towers since just after they were built. The thing that I remember the most about that day was the look on his face when the towers collapsed. He knew a lot of people that died that day.
 
On September 12th, with time given to commemorate those who died in such tragedy, it is now time to think how those actions hurt the lives of the living.

Today I think about how I had a promising career as a systems admin, and after this attack severely damaged the company I was working for, I was laid off. With the economy severely damaged, I was unable to find another systems admin job, and wound up having to start my career all over again, and being a contracted computer tech at 30 left me behind many others, and kept behind by people's misconceptions, and I have not even been back to making as much income as I had in 2001.

I know I'm not alone in this. I know this attack left a lot of people with damaged lives, even if they didn't know anyone killed in the attack. It hurt all of us in some way. Don't forget that part. Even though the site of the attacks have been patched over with a park and a new building, with the damage to the Pentagon almost completely erased now, we have not completely repaired the damage they inflicted on this country.
 
dgingeri said:
I got laid off from my systems admin position specifically because of this, and then couldn't get a follow up job quickly enough. I was doing well. I had been doing desktop support work for about 5 years, and had moved up to systems admin work, and well on my way of being a good systems admin for a good career. It destroyed my career, and I had to start over. I only got back up to systems admin work a full decade later, and, adjusting for inflation, I still have not reached the level of income I had back then, let alone moved up. All because of one morning. I will not forget how they damaged my life.
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How did that happen? Sounds like there was more going on then just the 9/11 attacks. Heck I've worked jobs in IT that where completely out of my lane and still didn't have issues finding a job after that. I'm still not making what I made in 2010, but i'm only a couple thousand short of that and heck its getting taxed 50 cents on the dollar anyways.
 
GT98 said:
How did that happen? Sounds like there was more going on then just the 9/11 attacks. Heck I've worked jobs in IT that where completely out of my lane and still didn't have issues finding a job after that. I'm still not making what I made in 2010, but i'm only a couple thousand short of that and heck its getting taxed 50 cents on the dollar anyways.
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The economy after 9/11/2001 was pretty horrible around Denver. I had a really hard time finding any jobs open for about 2 years after 9/11 happened. All that was available was contract jobs. This being out of full time work for so long apparently gave the signal to hiring managers that I wasn't even worth looking at. It wasn't until 2005 that I found one of my old coworkers from my job before 9/11 who knew how good I was, and he was leaving a desktop support position for a systems admin position. (He was a high level systems admin/DBA before 9/11 and had the same issues getting jobs afterward, just slightly less bad than me because he had 5 years more experience.) He got me in for his old position, and I was able to work my way back up, slowly. It took another 4 years before I got a systems admin job, and that was with a company that was beginning to circle the drain. I haven't seen a raise of more than 1% since 2010.
 
I was at work that day and outside of my office, a lady said “a plane hit the WTC” after hearing it on the radio. I think we assumed that maybe it was cloudy and a small plane hit the WTC. Then we heard about the second plane hitting and went to our large auditorium, where news coverage was being shown. The people in charge said the work day was over and to go home, but not many people moved for quite some time. I’m 47 years old and this was definitely our generation’s Pearl Harbor and possibly the saddest day of my life.
 
I was in my 18th year of the Navy. Just got off a 4-8 watch early. Walked into the office when the second plane hit, I thought they was watching some action movie, until they told me it was real. Being the supervisor at that time, told them to call everyone in, it was going to be a long day. Everything changed that day, we was no longer untouchable. I doubt anyone will forget it, but we definitely need to remember. Thanks for the reminder Kyle.
 
It was my first year at college. Went to grab some breakfast from the cafeteria and brought it back to the dorm room. When I got back my roommate said to check out the TV, a plane had hit the world trade center. Right then the second plane hit on live TV. It was surreal. Some time later people came running into the dorm saying classes were canceled for the day and we, the US, was under attack. I was in the middle of South Dakota but everyone around me was thinking war was coming to us. I remember thinking if I should leave campus because it could be a target. Went outside to smoke and recall looking at the sky with a bit of worry. It was nuts.
 
I'll never forget it either. Was sleeping at a friends house at the time. Kept hearing radio reports or news reports from the Television when the first plane hit. Thought I was dreaming. Then my friends sister woke me up and told me to come next door. Remember arriving next door and seeing it on the TV. Thought it was something out of a movie.
The world changed that day & many many people suddenly grew up in a matter of hours.
 
I was in middle school, in history class of all things. The teacher turned on the TV and told us we are going to remember this for the rest of our lives. She was right.

I remember school being out the next day and in between playing Diablo 2 and watching the news trying to grasp what it all meant. So much changed after that.
 
I lived in California at the time and worked in IT at a small telephone company.

I remember people huddled around a TV watching it live and my boss came in and was all like "don't you people have work to do?".

Yeah.

When he later got fired from being a Director, he had to get a job as a bus driver.

People skills matter.
 
I was a "short-timer" and was being begged to reenlist.

I was a little ole Army, E4 stationed at that special place on Fort Meade, MD. After PT that morning, myself and the rest of our team went to our shop and began packing equipment immediately to deploy to Afghanistan along with a 3 member team for communication support.
Hard to believe it has been 17 freaking years..
 
I was in the office with the news being piped over the speakers. After the second tower was hit, they sent us home because we were working a federal contract, despite being a private company. During those hours, people had the hysteric idea that planes would be raining down all over the country to plow into any little target with government ties. Post offices in Anywhere, USA were never in any danger of course, but it was a time for freaking out.
 
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