Let's see where have I been in the past year or so. In February of 2001, I moved back to New York City from California. I necessarily didn't want to move back, but the job market in my field of expertise (read: administrative) seemed to dry up. Administrative work, while definitely not my favorite line of work, is something I can do well, but usually I become bored with it. My last job was working in the law department at Morgan Stanley Dean Witter in San Francisco. The lawyer I worked for was really a nice guy; in fact all the lawyers in that department were all nice (yes, I know, surprising). It just came down to the point where I was becoming responsible for other people hundreds of miles away to do their job and in the end, it was becoming increasingly more and more difficult and frustrating to do.
After a few tough months, I decided to come back to New York. A 4-day train ride later and here I was. New York seemed so different; definitely not the same town I left five years previous. The main thing I concentrated on after coming back was finding a job. After a few interviews and a lot of faxing of résumés, I found a temp-to-perm job working at Pitney Bowes. Pitney, a subsidiary of Merrill Lynch, handles desktop publishing duties for all the analysts and associates of Merrill. After a two week training stint, I started in the beginning of March down at the World Financial Center, across the street from the World Trade Center complex.
The people in my department are really nice; for all the jobs I've worked at, I've been very lucky to work with nice people. They showed me the ropes and after a short while, the job became second nature. Merrill Lynch follows a standard template design they created for all their MS-PowerPoint presentations, so learning what how to embed tables the correct way and using a consistent look became easy over time.
Of course, life isn't perfect. There are some bankers who are always going to cause trouble, whether intentional or unintentional. The best way to deal with a situation is to listen to what the banker wants and to use common sense. Usually that worked, but of course life isn't perfect. Luckily only a small percentage of the bankers were this troublesome. Those fortunate few were dubbed nicknames by our group (secretly, of course). There was Chuckles the Angry Clown, Timmy (from South Park), Captain Planet, Punky Brewster and a few others I'm sure. It was meant in good fun and to relieve the tension felt in the office.
One of the reasons why working downtown was beneficial to me was of The Chubb Institute is right across the street from my office. I've always been tinkering around computers ever since about sophomore year in high school. In my lifetime, I've gone from using an IBM-XT to a 486/50, Pentium 90, Pentium Pro 200 and a P2-450. Operating systems from DOS 2.1 - 6.22 and Win3.1, Windows 95, 98, NT, OS/2, System x and a few flavors of Linux. My main strength lies in troubleshooting both hardware and software. You learn by doing, mucking around in the innards of a computer, screwing up and learning from mistakes. That was what I was interested in and doing for many years; the problem with doing this for a living is you can't get any "real" experience unless you have a job in it. By the same token, you can't get a job in without experience. Argh!
I've volunteered as a moderator for some software and hardware sites: I was both a moderator (Oakland) and a senior moderator (San Francisco) on the Dial-Up Wide Area Gaming Organization (DWANGO), then a premiere gaming service in the mid-to-late '90's, before the service disappeared to the Far East and Asia. I've also moderated on some hardware/software sites' discussion boards: HardwareCentral and their sister site SharkyExtreme before resigning from both in 2001.
Suffice to say, I do have experience with computers. So I went to Chubb to prove it. I originally met with a guidance counselor to pursue a degree in helpdesk/troubleshooting, but after taking the standard entrance exam and scoring very highly on it, he thought it would be a better idea to pursue a network engineering degree. After some careful thought, I agreed and began my studies in late May in Hardware Fundamentals and Operating Systems, Network System Administration, Network Workstation/Server Administration, Large Enterprise Network Administration and Network Technologies.
The weather in New York slowly started to turn from the oppressing summer heat to a cool early Fall in September. One nice thing I thought about going to work shortly after joining Pitney was I would be totally underground except for the half block I had to walk from the house to the subway (which would become more useful when the weather turned much colder). But not yet, the weather was only about 70 degrees, actually quite nice for this time of year. In the plaza, there was a giant fountain that was nice to sit around before my shift started.
Of course, things changed on September 11th.
After leaving the fountain that morning and walking across the North Bridge, I arrived at the office and began work as usual. Up until about the previous 3 weeks, a typical 8-hour shift meant 8 hours of work. But the past few weeks, due partly to the Labor Day holiday, work was very slow. That morning, I was lucky; I got a job that would last a couple of hours. Tuning out the c-rap radio station that was on (we all took turns with the radio, but today was not mine), I went to work.
I remember hearing a noise, but that was usual. There was always noise going on somewhere. Literally minutes later, our Presentation Coordinator came rushing in from making his rounds and told us "One of the towers is on fire! We have to go!" We all looked at him like 'yeah, right.' "No joke, we have to go now!" He grabbed his jacket and ran out the door. We were close behind him, along with several other bankers and made our way down to Vessey Street. By the time we got there, we were entertaining rumors that it was possibly a missile or a small plane had hit the building.
My first reaction was I originally thought Merrill's South tower had been hit and I thought that our building could have been hit. Then it sunk in, once I walked further up the street. A lot of smoke and paper filled the air around the tower. We all watched talking amongst ourselves, listening to various rumors. We really didn't know what to do; we weren't sure if we should go back to work as we saw many people going back into our building. The next thing I know is I thought a crane was falling on top of me.
From out of nowhere, in about five seconds of time, the audio on the street went from the sounds of normal talking to the loudest mechanical sound I have ever heard in my life. I was looking up trying to find out where this sound was coming from and could not. If the sound hadn't stopped, I would have had to cover my ears. Then the screaming began and the mass running of people by me. It was like the Godzilla movies; having literally hundreds of people run past you screaming. If I weren't standing next to a tree, I probably would have been flattened. I don't remember hearing an explosion, but I do remember seeing debris and a fireball; I thought it was originally an explosion from the first tower that was hit. I was wrong.
At this point, our group got split up and I was only left with two people I knew. We mulled about trying to make sense of what was going on when I heard someone next to us say that a second plane had hit the other tower. This was too much; how the hell could, not one but two planes, hit both towers?? It didn't make sense and now I could tell something was very wrong. I had to get out of there; just for the fear of the unknown. I told both of them that I hoped to see them tomorrow because I wasn't sure if I would. I made my way around the block and walked back up to West Street. Hearing the commotion of the crowd, I knew what they were reacting to: people were jumping. First one then another; again and again and again. It will be a sound I will never forget. I pulled out my mp3 player and cycled through the songs until I found Metallica's Bleeding Me and just had the song repeat forever. This was the worst day of my life, and it was only 9:30 a.m.
Thousands of people were everywhere now and emergency vehicles were literally driving 90 mph down the West Side Highway. I got a block or two east and looked at the towers. What I saw made me sick and horrified; two huge holes were in each tower; papers were floating around like confetti. People were crying all around me; many looked on and said nothing. I continued east. I finally got to the Chambers Street subway and tried to get an uptown train but after about ten minutes of waiting, an announcement came over saying all the subways on the west side were closed. I walked upstairs and outside; I hoped to go to City Hall and grab another subway that ran up the East Side. Luckily, it was still running and got on.
It seemed that most people in the subway didn't know what was going on; I just sat trying to make sense of what was going on. There was no way that this could be any accident. I finally got uptown to 86th street; once outside I tried to make a phone call on a pay phone to let family know I was okay, but all the phones were dead. I got on the cross-town bus trying to get home but all cross-town traffic was closed so I got out and walked across Central Park. I ran into a group of people at the baseball fields and finally heard actual news of the events, although I wish I hadn't. I finally made it home at about 10:30a.m. Truly a morning I will never forget.
