Me, thirteen years ago at the top of the World Trade Center
Eight years ago today I was living in an alternate reality. I was Mr. Buttondown Corporatedude, commuting across town in Boise, Idaho, teaching computer software to corporate audiences for a company called New Horizons. On that particularly unremarkable Tuesday morning, I was scheduled to teach an advanced course in Microsoft Project.
I arrived at work at 7:46am Mountain Time. By then, it has been one hour since the first jet hit the World Trade Center and 44 minutes since the second jet hit. But I drive to work without any radio and was a bit late, so I go straight from the prep room to my classroom to set up. On the way, I notice two co-workers intently studying their internet connections and mentioning something about a plane hitting a building in New York, but nothing that catches my attention more than it being a small plane and a tragic accident.
My class begins at 8:30am. By now, all flights have been grounded and President Bush has addressed the nation about the terrorist attacks over an hour ago. A half hour prior, Todd Beamer and the heroes of United 93 are fighting their hijackers and crash-landing their jet outside of Shanksville PA and the South Tower (upon which I stood for that photo five years before) has collapsed. The North Tower collapses just two minutes before I begin my presentation.
I teach my sixteen corporate project managers until first break at 10:30 am. None of us have any idea that our nation is under attack. Nobody from our sales staff or management bothers to tell any of us, though they know, as they were huddled around a television in the break room. At break, nearly every teacher and student has gathered in this room to watch the news reports. President Bush gives a statement six minutes into the break. It is clear that we are at war. I am devastated; I had served my state and country from 1985-1990 in the National Guard and have always been a proud American.
Then comes a moment that crystallized my disdain for the corporate world. Thinking back today, I realize this is the moment where a part of me realizes that I cannot be Mr. Buttondown Corporatedude for the rest of my life. Our company president announces that due to the attacks, any students who wish to leave will be given vouchers to re-take their classes.
In other words, for us teachers, the show must go on for any students that don’t want to re-take the classes, and as luck would have it, my project managers had all come in from out-of-town, and all sixteen decide to stay. I had to spend the rest of September 11th, 2001, trying to teach advanced software skills when all I really want to do is watch the news and cry.
Every time I think about September 11th, I have to pull myself back from conspiracy thinking and my urge to jump whole-hog into the 9/11 Truth movement. I think there are far too many unanswered questions about 9/11, but I’m overloaded as it is fighting prohibition without adding another huge cause to my agenda.
But about that prohibition and 9/11, just remember: if the attacks were indeed masterminded by Bin Laden and the Taliban out of the caves of Afghanistan, the money that fueled their activities was earned through the sales of opium for heroin, which is only massively profitable due to its prohibition. And today, the money that fuels the murderous activities of Mexican Cartels (who’ve killed quadruple the number of people killed on September 11th, by the way) is attributable to prohibition.
Drug prohibition is a terrorists best business opportunity. When you support prohibition, you support terrorism.
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Pfffft… Now say that 10 times fast.
Funny thing is, I escaped the Matrix long ago and understood just about everything you are getting at, except copying from one buffer to another… I mean really.. WHY?? It’s bad enough that we must have null terminators, but to move from a perfectly good buffer is insanity. Furthermore, there is no such thing as a sanitized input any more
. As they say in Las Vegas Desktop Support, “What happens in Vegas, Stays in Vegas… Unless it’s a virus.”
Boo yah
I’m off to my Neptune Nugs!
No, nothing like that.
Advanced computer software? As in how to use proprietary corporate software such as ICOMS,etc.? Or as in safe programming practices for avoiding common programming errors that result in exploitable software bugs such as heap and stack overflows, integer overflows, and other problems directly related to improperly sanitized input and/or (arguably) functions widely used in standard c-type language libraries that don’t check for null terminators when copying data from one buffer to another? Youth wants to know! Srsly, you made me curious now.
So now your Minnesota hippy he he. Minnesotan here too. Glad its been good for ya here.
From the CIA created crack cocaine epidemic in Los Angeles; the CIA support of Laotian heroin laboratories to hook US troops in South Vietnam; to the inexcusable support of Mexican “murderous” cartels by prohibiting marijuana, our government’s Prohibition creates and sustains Terrorism. Fight Terrorism–End Prohibition.
6 of the 10 members in the 911 commission said the commission was set up to “fail”. over 800 architectural and engineering professionals question the offical 911 story. weapons grade thermite explosives have been found and confirmed in the 911 dust by multiple scientists in different countries. FBI admittes they “have no real proof Osama Bin Laden is responsible for 911″. do your own research. truth is stranger than fiction.
911 was an inside job !
Lay it down, providing an entire industry for the enemy to exploit only harms national security…
terrorists suck!
I guess I ain’t done yet.
Rather than watching the news in the mornings I now do a bit o’ newshawking for the stash. I think I probably posted more links yesterday than normal… way more than normal. So, in a way, I guess… the stash got the benefit of the affect the 9/11 attacks had on me.
Ha! I found something good!
OK, maybe not ’nuff said.
I was sitting in front of the T.V. watching the morning news shows when they interupted the show because “something was happening in New York City”. Then they showed the towers… one burning. A few minutes later… and I could not believe I was seeing it live, another jet slams into the remaining tower. I was glued to the TV… didn’t want to watch, but couldn’t not watch. (Some of us are morbid like that) I remember seeing little specks dropping from the towers and realized after a few minutes that I was seeing people falling to their deaths… rather than being roasted alive. I still didn’t want to watch, but couldn’t tear myself away.
I watched the collapse of the 2nd tower struck, then the first.
I don’t watch the news on T.V. these days.
On 9/11/01 I was in one of my worst relapses of PTSD in my life. The attack didn’t help me at all. Kinda made things worse…
‘nuf said on that.
On 9/11/04 I moved to Minnesota’s secluded northwoods. No relapses since… wit’ da help of a li’l herb.