I woke up this morning as I usually do, got on my computer as I usually do, checked my e-mail as I usually do, and got on the Internet.
Well, at least I tried. The network was down. Turned out a piece of UNET equipment had failed, but it sure scared the heck out of me. Made me wonder for a minute what would happen if the Internet went away.
I saw a lot of people’s reactions today; some thought that it was overpublicized, some thought we should drop it, others hailed the celebrations. I dunno. I did mostly normal stuff. I thought some about what had happened a year ago, and I watched Dr. Mark Heath’s video from CNN. The high-pitched squeals of either the respirators or the police sirens filled with soot is the one sound I’ll remember most from a year ago.
I still remember the moments coming back from NMD 295 and hearing about what had happened. I still have the six hours of MSNBC footage on tape that I caught twelve months ago. I still remember the feelings I felt that day.
Three days after one year ago, I wrote the following.
The events of the past few days have made me reconsider myself and America in general. My views will change after this tragedy. I’m no longer worried as much about Big Brother; now FBI’s Carnivore e-mail monitoring program seems reasonable. Of course, this event will inevitably bring back the stereotype discrimination that we as a country have seen and dismissed in the past. I truly hope that our country’s leaders pursue a reasonable resolution to this problem through various kinds of intelligence. I will say, however, that I do not favor war in order to combat this kind of attack. We are currently mourning the loss of thousands of lives within the course of an hour or two. We should stand tall and not cause thousands of other (mostly civilian) lives to be killed on the other side of the world. We are all people. We have different beliefs, we have different values, but we are all people. Whether you’re religious or not, it’s simply wrong to kill other humans, no matter what the reason. As we’ve seen over the last couple of days, not all results of this attack are negative. If possible, I would like to go down to New York and Washington and personally thank each firefighter, policeman, EMS worker, and other volunteer that has worked on the tragedies. They are the true American heroes. I also hope this makes our politicians realize how trivial many of the partisan arguments they debate really are. And please, think of those in need. Donate your time, money, service, or blood to the Red Cross or other organization. Hundreds of sites have set up collections, including Amazon.com. Let’s learn from our mistakes and make our country stronger than ever.
My beliefs haven’t changed, even after a year. United we stand.