What were you doing when you heard about the 9-11 tragedy?

[FrancesBeansRevenge]

I was participating in an urban assault counter-terrorism operation.
We were killing terrorists in droves. One of my team members said over the radio that the US is being attacked.
Our whole unit was stunned and we allowed the terrorists to get the drop on us and they killed us all.

But, as if by a miracle, I respawned and did it all over again!

gg me.

 

[nydoofus]

Was about to school when I saw it on the TV. Didn't know what to do since I wasn't sure if I could go anywhere (turns out the subways were shutdown so I couldn't even if I tried to go to school). Me and my friend spent the rest of the day watching from Brooklyn Heights.

 

[Jeff7]

At college; Cisco networking class. Someone had just come back from the cafeteria with the news; I tried my best to track it on the Internet from the classroom - both news sites, and Anandtech's OT forum. They cancelled classes; everyone was very distraught from it. Someone told me that the building had collapsed, but I couldn't believe that - I didn't see how a hit to the top could cause that. But there were the pictures coming in. So terrible to see it.

 

[Brutuskend]

Sleeping. It was my day off.

But as "luck" would have it I left the TV on all night, and woke up to the news of the attack.

 

[brtspears2]

Someone thought it be funny to drag my ass out of bed and into Dennys at 430am PST .... and about an hour or so later, everyone starts talking about it.

 

[SweetBaboo]

sleeping in my bed as my first class wasn't until 11am...my girlfriend called me up and told me to turn on the news because the WTC was attacked...i didn't think it could be serious...it happened before and no one was hurt...she said, this time it's different...so i turned on my tv and couldn't go back to sleep...i woke up the rest of my roomates and we all watched in a sort of stage of shock as we never expected anything like this could happen on american soil

 

[dukdukgoos]

I heard about it on AnandTech Forums...read the post, turned on the TV...one of the towers had already come down. A few minutes later my boss called to tell me not to come in to work (I work at a 55 story building in downtown L.A.) Scary day...

 

[Freejack2]

I was in class and someone who came in late said something about a plane possibly crashing into one of the buildings. We started checking on the internet and I finally found a site that wasn't slammed that had something about it. About halfway through class they had turned on the big screen in the main hallway of the building so we could see what was going on. I remember calling my wife and waking her up to tell her what happened. After my first class was over they closed the college for the rest of the day. I went home and watched it on tv the rest of the day and posted on here.

 

[SupaDupaCheez]

I was doing 3rd shift at the time and just went to bed when my wife woke me. She told me a plane hit the WTC so I said (in a sleepy stupor) "Oh, that sucks" and went back to sleep. About ten minutes later she woke me up and told me, through tears, that the second plane hit. Needless to say, I was awake and watching the various news channels all day long until the start of my next shift. I got about an hour of sleep. I then came home after that shift and watched CNN for a good part of the next day. It was very tough to pull away from the TV. I was so damned pissed that someone (anyone) would do something that screwed up on OUR OWN SOIL. It was simply amazing how the emotions flowed from Shock-Pissed Off-sadness-patriotic-and back again and again. It is still hard to fathom. I have nothing but respect for ANYONE who was involved in the rescue/fund raising effort. While this event was a terrible thing, it has helped to unite us as a nation and give everyone a reason to love this country for what it is...... FREE and PROUD.


SDC

 

[glen]

I just got off a flight from NY.

 

[vegetation]

Was writing my ebay emails. Last email I wrote before the news, I told a guy in the UK to expect their package within the week. Ultimately, took this person 3 months to get it.

 

[Nemesis77]

I was having ice-cream with my girlfriend in a ice-cream bar (it was about 4pm in here then) when her mother called her and told that "New York is on fire". I escorted her to her train and started to make my way towards bus-station. As I did that, I passed a shop-window that had several televisions showing different tv-channels. A huge crowd had gathered there to watch the attacks. I watched for a while, went back home as fast as possible and turned on BBC World.

 

[Orsorum]

I was in bed, my mom woke me up originally, I didn't believe her and fell back asleep. My sister called me around 8AM (West Coast) and woke me up again, and I stayed up. Went to my old h.s. to help the tech lady out for a bit, we spent all our time watching CNN. Then went to work, but I don't think we had more than three customers the entire evening (used to work in an instrumental music store).

 

[Migroo]

I was at work, news started coming in at around 2pm for us... still remember that day..

 

[TripleJ]

It was about 9 or 10pm here. I was just browsing these forums while watching the TV. The channel then crossed live to the South Tower billowing smoke.

 

[Legendary]

Sitting in my AP Spanish class. First thing I assumed is that it was an accident, but I was soon proved wrong.
RIP

 

[hans007]

well i had work (fixing all those HP pavilions the n00bs you know send back for rma) at 7am. all i saw was video of a plane crashing on the tv for about 5 seconds, and i was like, woah a plane crashed, and then i left for work at 6:30 am. didnt know the world trade center got hit until like lunch time.

 

[jlee]

Browsing sharkyforums, when I saw a thread saying the WTC was hit by an airplane...at the time, I had no idea what it was (our TV barely gets a channel or 3..we never watch them), so we went to the neighbor's and watched it there.

 

[Liviathan]

I was in Bloomington, IL, I was there for work. Woke up in my hotel room at around 7:50 Central Time after the first plane had hit, turn on the today show watching the first tower smoke.

I had no clue what was going on.....then the second plane hit and I still had no clue what was going on.

the rest of the day was spent on a daze.

 

[iamwiz82]

i was posting here.

 

[FeathersMcGraw]

I was at work catching up on my email. One of them was a note from someone on a mailing list I'm subscribed to which said, inexplicably, "HOLY SH!T I SAW IT HAPPEN" and nothing else. I didn't know what to make of it until, mere minutes later, someone sent me an instant message asking if I'd heard the news. It later occurred to me that the person who sent the message lives and works in NYC.

 

[Bulk Beef]

I was just getting started on the way to work after dropping a movie off at Blockbuster. Had the radio on in the car. Ben Folds was in the studio, playing an acoustic. The DJ's started talking, but I really wasn't listening at all. I heard one of them say "Oh my God, a second plane just hit", and I knew immediately what was going on. I spent most of my commute wondering "When will this come here?".

Sometime between 9:40 and 9:45, I got my answer. One of the DJs was talking to someone on the phone, and the guy said that the Pentagon had been hit. I thought "That's bullsh|t". 30 seconds later, there was an opening in the trees lining the inside of the beltway. I looked to my left, and saw a huge cloud of black smoke from about 8-10 miles away. Given the timing, this was probably about five minutes after the plane had hit.

I spent the day at a client site in Alexandria, five miles due south of the Pentagon, posting here and listening to the news piped through the telephone, and looking at the cloud on my smoke breaks.

I left at 5:30 to go home. The beltway, which is normally a mess during rush hour, was a ghost town.

It started to sink in on that drive, and my eyes welled up with tears.

 

[burnedout]

Arrived at work in downtown Austin at 8:00 am CST that morning. Listened to a CD on the way into work so didn't hear the news. Had to telnet into the mail server to correct a glitch. Was waiting on a call from NYC, so I first opened the Hot Deals forum and then ATOT and saw the thread to the effect of "Plane hits WTC". The call never came in BTW.

Found a link on the thread to the ABC newsfeed. Began watching that. At around 8:40 am CST, the church on 7th and San Jacinto began ringing their bell very slowly as if to mourn the unfolding tragedy. Went downstairs to the courtyard that exits onto Brazos. A woman was on her cell phone crying as she heard the news that one tower had fallen.

Continued working for the remainder of the day. Nearly everyone I encountered was in somewhat of a state of shock. Had a sales visit by a security alarm rep. He was also in a state of shock so we cut our visit short.

Went to class that evening. The professor made a remark alluding to the idea that this was a result of how the US had treated others in the world - liberal arts prof, what do you expect. Kept my cool and received an A in that class at the end of the semester. Attended a second class, then went home and watched the news until 1:00 AM.

 

[Hammer]

I was at work, and started my daily check of new sites. Then they all stopped working. So I started browsing tech site and saw the thread on AT (back when I was just a lurker).

 

[mpitts]

I was working at my desk when a coworker told me what happened. I turned on the radio and listened for the rest of the day. Obviously all of the major news sites were hammered, so I didn't REALLY see what had happened until I got home from work (I left early). I understood the magnitude of what had happened, but it wasn't until I saw the footage on CNN that I truly realized what had transpired.