Regardless of my political thoughts on the matter, 9/11 was a tragedy. On this 5th anniversary of the event, I refer back to a post I made at the time (quoted below). As we all remember and send our prayers to all those who were affected one way or another, my own memories return to the day. I'll talk more about it below the quote from the day it happened.

(Please note that for us in New Zealand, it happened on 9/12, as we're about 17 hours ahead of the US. And today, which is 9/11 in NZ, is still only 9/10 in the US. Damn timezones...)

Along with America and the rest of the world, I'm in shock, and have been for the entire day. What a sad and horrifying day this been...

Terrorists have co-ordinated the hijacking of 4 planes and have destroyed the World Trade Centre in New York, along with a plane impacting into the Pentagon. Another plane was possibly aimed at Camp David, but crashed before it reached there. Thousands of people dead.

I've never been as shocked about something as I have been about this. It's like a heavy feeling in my stomach, and I've been in a dazed mood all day.

My condolences and sympathy to the people over there in New York and Washington.

My memory of that day was that there were a lot of people who didn't have perspective. I was working as a helpdesk analyst, and while the TV was going in the background so we could all keep up to date with events, I was taking phone calls from people who had computer or software problems. The common theme of helpdesks is:

"My computer doesn't work! My software has an error! It's urgent! You've got to fix it now!"

But when these people are calling you and talking about how their lives are going to hell because Word crashed on them and they lost an hour's worth of documentation that they were too stupid to save, and they're demanding you get it back for them.... or their computer doesn't work because they're too stupid to to realise they've accidentally nudged the cable out, and instead of wanting to follow your instructions to plug it back in, they demand that you send an engineer around to fix their computer because they need it working urgently....

I had a hard time keeping my cool. As I'm watching people jumping out of the burning WTC buildings and falling hundreds of feet to their deaths, I was disgusted with these idiots who call the helpdesk because they can't handle their own stupid mistakes. Their own petty lives and small brains and self-centred attitudes....

"Get some perspective!" I wanted to scream at them. "People are dying by the thousands in New York, and you're fucking crying about a crashed Word program!"

That's what I wanted to scream at them. But instead, I helped them with their problem, while watching the tragedy on TV... all the while hating these self-centred retards that I was employed to help. People who can't help themselves, and cry to others when they need help. They disgusted me.

That's my memory of today, five years ago.