I found out about the first plane hitting when my mother called me at work, on a land line I believe, just after I arrived. I fresh out of my BS and worked as a software developer at CMU at the time.

I went into my boss’s office and told him, and I remember he thought it was a small plane. We had a test server room near our office that had a TV and original XBox. A few of us went into the server room to watch the coverage. Soon after, the second plane hit. I remember asking one of our senior managers if this was bigger than Pearl Harbor. He just looked at me dumbfounded. A while later the towers fell.

I had a friend who lived in NYC and commuted to Jersey City via the PATH train, so I called him to make sure he was okay. He was. At the time, I didn’t understand that the towers had completely collapsed; I thought they were half standing. My friend from NYC told me I was wrong—-“they’re gone man.”

We continued watching the coverage together for a couple of hours until the University announced that it was closing for the day (I think it closed the rest of the week, but can’t remember). Then we all just shambled home, stunned.

I remember being surprised and a little heartened that the US waited a month the strike back at Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan. By the time we invaded Iraq, I was no longer heartened, but completely disillusioned about the USA as a force for “good” in the world.