Downtime

Another week in lovely Wilmington, DE, has come to an end for me. I remember when air travel was an exciting novelty (have I said this before?). The prospect of "getting to fly" was wrought with excitement. The night before a flight was spent barely sleeping in anticipation.

By this point in my career, however, it has become complete and utter tedium. I wake up at the last minute. I curse the early hour. I struggle across town to the airport. I select seats on the aisle to avoid being crammed into a wall. I remain wholly anti-social until the entire affair has come to an end.

Prior to this trip, I purchased a set of Ultimate Ear super.fi 3 earbuds to drown out all the noise in the fuselage. I have to say, they were great. Usually, after I travel, I've a headache from the drone of the engines, constant chatter and wails of obnoxious children. On neither Monday, nor Friday, this week, did I feel the audible effects of the flights. I even had the misfortune of being seated amid a number of noisy children on both my return flights. The Ulimtate Ear kit paid off in spades, as I didn't hear a single bit of their tedious and excessive youthful nonsense. I highly recommend these suckers to anyone else who struggles to successfully drown out the background noises of a plane.

In the Philadelphia airport, yesterday, I purchased a copy of Flags of our Fathers. It's an interesting history of the six men photographed raising the flag atop Mount Suribachi in 1945. A compelling story, albeit clumsily written. I've consumed about fifty-percent of the book and have enjoyed the portrait painted within. The selection is timely, as a film will be released, later this year, based on the novel. The trailer seems as clumsy as the novel, though. I believe I'll have to do more research into the matter before choosing to see the film.

Enough rambling for the evening...

SQL> Select Rain From Forecast Where Thunderstorm = True;

I need a bigger, uglier rock, please...

...I hate AS400...

Really. This dinosour just won't go away. Nor will the crotchety codgers who still specialize in it. They cringe at the thought of a relational database. They scurry off when the light of object-oriented development shines above them.

The most efficient tool available to me for retrieving data from this piece of hagis is the AS400 query tool. Which cannot span logic. Ugh. I really want to look at something else for a while.

SQL> Delete From tbl_Systems Where Functionality = 'Obsolete';

IH-10 East, Just Before the Huebner Road Overpass

This incorrect statement was read on the radio:

"...and in national news, a small commuter plane has crashed into the World Trade Center..."

I was lazily making my way to the office, only a couple of miles away. I wasn't exiting Fredericksburg, because we'd been moved off the main campus two years prior. I had just moved into a new apartment and ten days earlier interviewed for a position with my current employer.

That was my life in a flash. Rather insignificant, as I reconsider the thoughts I had on that morning.

"A small commuter plane? That doesn't sound right. This is it. This is the one. They've tried so hard for the last ten years."

I started racing through the available radio stations looking for something more accurate. Something more complete. I found nothing.

I think I sped up a little bit, drifting above the speed limit. I exited for Medical Drive and slipped past the final two blocks leading to my office building.

I was on edge, waiting to hear how my interview had gone. I tried to make the reality of my life more important than the news on the radio. I hoped the synopsis I'd heard was correct. I tried to make my life bigger than that reality.

I sat down at my desk and went through my morning login routine.

I started an internet browser and proceeded directly to CNN.com, looking for more information.

I couldn't access the website. There was too much traffic on the site.

It wasn't a small commuter plane, I thought.

Where is the rest of my unit?

I typed in the URL for a local news station. It was inaccessible.

Local news was unavailable?

Where is the rest of my unit? Why is the floor so still, so quiet?

I looked at my phone, hoping the red light would be on. Wishing for a voicemail from the individuals who had interviewed me. I was still trying to go on with my life. I was sitll hoping what I'd heard on the radio was right.

By the time I typed in the URL for MSNBC.com, noise had begun to return to the floor. But not the sound of agents answering calls from customers. Nor the sound of collectors making outbound calls. This was something else.

And there it was. Right in front of my eyes on MSNBC.com. One of the buildings already smoldering. The other demonstrating the first signs of a conflagration.

I have spent something on the order of thirty minutes, so far, typing this entry. Seventeen minutes elapsed between the first collision and the second. Twenty, maybe twenty five minutes passed for me. The time it took to find and identify the news. Twenty five precious minutes to someone on the third floor. Or the tenth.

Twenty five interminable minutes in which someone above the impacts realized there was no escape.

Twenty four minutes longer than someone aboard the first plane had to consider their situation.

Eight minutes more than someone aboard the second plane.

Time for me had become objective. Get out, I thought. But, how? There's no time.

Are there more?

I went to the breakroom. Televisions in the breakroom were always running CNN.

There was hardly space in a room meant for about 75 people.

It was real. This was happening. There it was, on a live feed. No speculation.

I watched for a few minutes. Until I could no longer deny my own responsibilities. I went back to my desk.

News floated in from the breakroom. The Pentagon. Another plane crash. Each tower fell.

I saw the first collapse, live. I remember that. I had drifted away from my tasks again to see what was happening on the news. It happened. How many people were in that building? How much time do the people in the second building have?

Borrowed time. Everyone who escaped lived on borrowed time.

I can't imagine how horrible it is to realize that. I've never lived on borrowed time.

My life went on. A week to the day later, I received the call: "We would like to offer you a position." I turned in my resignation. I started my new job.

Every moment. The entire sequence of September 11, 2001 became a blur for me.

I didn't forget.

But I don't remember enough.

I don't remember frequently.

Thank you...

... to all the hard working public servants that protect us on a daily basis. We shouldn't need a day to say thanks, you should always be in our thoughts. Alas, such is not the case.

Please keep up your hard work.