Two years ago

I connected to IRC soon after getting up on September 11. I didn't usually do that. My first class was at 8:10.

Session Start: Tue Sep 11 07:50:09 2001
[07:50] *** Now talking in #mozillazine
[07:50] *** Topic is 'Planes crash into world trade center's twin towers, Pentagon | http://www.abc.net.au/streaming/newsradio.ram Live Audio'
[07:50] *** Set by Hendikins on Tue Sep 11 06:52:42

[07:50] <ksosez> oh my goc
[07:50] <ksosez> god
[07:50] <ksosez> Jesse you okay?
[07:50] <nvs81> free to air tv does me good
[07:50] <rkaa> ...we have a report that ...airplane..pennsylvania...747...no details yet..but it's crashed southeast of pittsburg
[07:50] <ksosez> yeah i hear that
[07:51] <grissu> 2nd plane flying to pentagon !!!!!
[07:51] *** Hendikins changes topic to 'Planes crash into world trade center's twin towers, Pentagon | http://www.abc.net.au/streaming/newsradio.ram Live Audio [DOWN]&#15;'
[07:51] <Anthem> Arafat condemns plane attacks in U.S. - Reuters
[07:51] <sodapop3k> whoa.
[07:51] <Jesse> ksosez: yes, why?
[07:51] <doron> Anthem: he condemns everything
[07:51] <rkaa> poor sod
[07:51] <grissu> 2nd plane flying to pentagon !!!!!
[07:51] <Anthem> 10:48am 09/11/01 BOEING 767 CRASHES NORTH OF SOMERSET COUNTY AIRPORT
[07:52] <Hendikins> Jesse: read topic

How did you find out about the September 11 attacks?

10 Responses to “Two years ago”

  1. Mark Says:

    I usually set my alarm so that it beeps at me to wake me, but for some reason I hadn’t slid the thing on my alarm clock far enough over so instead of beeping it turned the radio on.

    When I woke up I didn’t know what they were talking about at all, but I clearly heard them say that all the planes in the US had been grounded. Then the thought goes through my head, “Mark, that’s not normal.”
    I got up and turned the TV on and then just stood there and stared at it forever – at which point enters the feelings of unreality – like this is more like a movie than reality.

  2. Eivind Lie Nitter Says:

    As I live in Norway, the time was about 4 pm here when it happened. So I first heard of it when I came to work after school that day.

    At first I didn’t really realize how bad it was, but it didn’t take so long to understand after reading a couple of news web pages..

  3. Rich Says:

    I saw some smoke walking to the subway. Some guy on the street mentioned the towers. Then going across the manhattan bridge, saw them both smoking. I stupidly thought it was a fire that had somehow sprouted in both of them. Someone on the train mentioned plane crash (I was thinking along the lines of a Cessna), but most people (me included) seemed just worried and sort of in awe of it. Then by the time I got to work, people were freaking out (possibly due to our proximity to the empire state building), and I couldn’t go up and just start working. I still didn’t really know what was going on until one of my coworkers told me about it in the lobby.

  4. tim jackson Says:

    Was out on the piss with some mates in london and saw it on the news… the state i was in just made me laugh and carry on in my own little dream world…

    couldn’t believe it the next morning!

  5. Gerv Says:

    I found out the same way as Jesse – I was interning at mozilla.org at the time, and I woke up and immediately logged on to IRC.

    Gerv

  6. Adrian Rossouw Says:

    I was just sitting around online, when people started sending me joke jpegs. I honestly heard the jokes before i heard the news. I was sent a .jpg with the WTC with a plane flying through it , overlayed by the HUD from counter-strike with the words ‘terrorists win’ in the middle of the screen.

    That’s an ode to the internet I think. Also , shortly after that .. all my bandwidth imploded , as our network operations center in new york (i am south african) was right underneath the WTC and got demolished in the blast.

  7. Jesse Ruderman Says:

    People are finding this page search for ‘counter-strike twin towers terrorists win’, so I guess I’ll link to that image: http://hem.passagen.se/wtc1.kojv.net/cs.jpg .

  8. FrodoB Says:

    My experience was somewhat surreal. My roommate had NPR on in the morning, which before I went to breakfast was reporting “a plane hit one of the towers”. I assumed a bi-plane.

    Classmates of mine talked about it in a music class in vague terms, but I hadn’t a clue what they were referring to at that point. They apparently had heard the planes were larger, but I had not, so their talk was gibberish to me.

    I only truly found out when some moron called in a bomb threat for our campus (which would happen 5 more times in the course of two weeks; idiots who were unprepared for tests, I think) while I was in a data structures class. We were evacuated, and then over a loudspeaker the president of the college announced the cancellation of classes due to the planes and the bomb scare. We couldn’t even go to the dorms or cafeteria, as the scare was campus-wide. My then girlfriend, now wife, and I found each other and just walked away from campus past prayer vigils and the like which were forming. My grandparents lived near the campus at the time, and so we walked over to their house to get some food and to watch the TV.

    Horrific sight. I’ll never forget finding out in CS class.

  9. Jesse Ruderman Says:

    If the hem.passagen.se image link doesn’t work, try http://www.squarefree.com/terrorists%20win.jpg .

  10. Krakan Says:

    Oh my ***
    This is just to horrible.
    Where are the world going?
    Live well!