September 11, 2011 Day of Remembrance

[Coign]

I was working at my old job, an Internet Service Provider, where I was an engineer. (I connected local points of presence in cities back to the main office for service.)

The Internet tech bubble had just burst about a year before and this was many because of too much money and not enough people who understood it. But it was the day I realized that the Internet had become a utility. It meant as much to these people as power, gas, and water. Our ISP went on high alert for support as everyone logged online all at the same time.

Our company was made aware of the first plane hitting and within 5-10 minutes we had a TVs setup in the support room, the engineer room, and the sales break room. During that day I monitored a number of forums, news feeds, and RSS feeds.

There were all kinds of rumors flying across the Internet. Flight 93 that crashed into Pennsylvania was reported to have been shot down by Air Force jets at the time by MSNBC. The Pentagon was reported to have been destroyed at one time. And people were wondering if we were ever going to fly again.

It was a crazy day.