Where Were You...9/11?

On Hwy 70 in Bartlett Tn. at a vehicle crash. PD came over to tell us that a plane had hit the first tower. We watched the rest unfold at the firestation.

I know this shows how young I am but I was in 9th grade geometry class. My teacher was a Navy veteran and one of the other teachers came in and told him and he just started crying. I will never forget it.

I was on my way to the New Orleans to catch a flight to Houston for a meeting with BP. Didn't fly that day. We see lots of helicopters around here changing crews on offshore platforms and plenty air traffic to and from New Orleans. I remember going outside in the evening for days and not seeing a single plane.

How are you making out. Need anything? Hopefully you have electricity.

Doing fine. Got electricity on Monday. Flew back to Houston on Tuesday after four days of cleanup here. Drove back with my bride and dogs on Wednesday. Little weary from all the cleanup and still working on fence repairs - will eat this whale a bite at a time. No complaints from this corner - we really dodged a bullet on this one.

Thanks Mike.

I was working for Cisco in the Technicial Support Center.

Cisco had a brand new product about to be released to the world called IPTV. It got a major shake down as every Cisco PC\Laptop and Workstation was playing CNN live.

One of my Colleagues was on the phone with one of Canter Fitzgerald's network engineers when the first plane struck. She was 8 months pregnant and we never heard from her again.

I had two cases in my queue for the Port Authority that closed that day simply because the network was no longer there.

In the course of an hour we watched the total calls waiting in NMS TAC drop from 34 to ZERO. The same thing was seen in each of the TAC areas. People just hung up and each of them told us the same thing as we called them back. "My problem just doesn't matter anymore."

When our phones did ring it was from people asking us to help them re-establish connections to NYC. All we could do was tell them that would be impossible, but we would try. For days that helpless task repeated itself as people came back to reality. Some we could connect, others simply were gone.

I am think one of two fates would be fitting for Bin Laden

1. Turn him into a woman and drop him Afghanistan.

2. Build a big fire and put him in a helicopter. Fly him up 1/4 of a mile (the height of the two towers) and then kick his ass out of the helicopter.. Then drop a one ton slab of concrete on what's left if corpse..

I was sitting in my home office preparing a proposal for a client in Idaho - I live in Florida and was scheduled out there the next week. My wife called and told me to turn on the TV. I sat there transfixed until the phone rang again - it was an insurance salesman. I went ballistic! These people were trying to make a buck selling insurance to older Americans (yes my kids and gkids suspect me of knowing George Washington) while the US was under attack.

The next generation understands me as grandpa, the guy who is easy to hit up for nearly anything they want. Thank God I can still enjoy them and I pray to God to show me the things I can still do to protect them.

I work for CNBC and was at work when the first call came in. We just happen to have a camera right across the river from the WTC. We turned up the camera and watched it all day. We had dozens of people down there at the NYSE and had no idea what happened to them. Thankfully they were all alright.