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Platial | Who and What's Nearby
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We were introducing a major new system, and I was in charge of the testing. 9/11 was our first day to test the full system, and I got started about 7:30.
When the dastardly deed occurred, I was deep into the 1st tier of programs, and things in my little world were going well. Very well. Virtually all work around me stopped, with people standing everywhere, talking over cube walls like so many gophers popped out of their holes.
My wife called, asking me to come home (we lived over an hour away) because she didn't want me to die. There is nothing of any headline value or strategic value around, so I felt reasonably safe and preferred to stay where I was rather than risk aeons on the Beltway and Cabin John, er, Veterans Memorial Bridge - which I felt were significantly more likely targets than my humble building. So I continued working.
We completed a full cycle of testing that day in about 14 hours, which was very impressive as trial tests earlier had taken days to run. Testing the next day ran in about 12 hours, and dropped to 8 by the end of the week. After we got into routine we typically completed the cycle of testing in about 6.5 hours, to everyone's delight. (Not that anyone really cares about how well our testing went. Or how wonderful and indispensable I was to the effort. *toot toot!* *pat pat*)
I finally got to see video of the crashes and collapses on the 11 o'clock news. And the follow up reports after the new. And the hollow-eyed comments by Dan Rather and other reports who had been working all day, and were beyond beautifying by their make-up units.
I couldn't help but feel for the workers who had gone in to their jobs, as I had, for a good day's work, but unlike me, never finished. Well, not in the way they would have preferred. And knowing how my own wife worried, felt for the families they left behind.
We were introducing a major new system, and I was in charge of the testing. 9/11 was our first day to test the full system, and I got started about 7:30.
When the dastardly deed occurred, I was deep into the 1st tier of programs, and things in my little world were going well. Very well. Virtually all work around me stopped, with people standing everywhere, talking over cube walls like so many gophers popped out of their holes.
My wife called, asking me to come home (we lived over an hour away) because she didn't want me to die. There is nothing of any headline value or strategic value around, so I felt reasonably safe and preferred to stay where I was rather than risk aeons on the Beltway and Cabin John, er, Veterans Memorial Bridge - which I felt were significantly more likely targets than my humble building. So I continued working.
We completed a full cycle of testing that day in about 14 hours, which was very impressive as trial tests earlier had taken days to run. Testing the next day ran in about 12 hours, and dropped to 8 by the end of the week. After we got into routine we typically completed the cycle of testing in about 6.5 hours, to everyone's delight. (Not that anyone really cares about how well our testing went. Or how wonderful and indispensable I was to the effort. *toot toot!* *pat pat*)
I finally got to see video of the crashes and collapses on the 11 o'clock news. And the follow up reports after the new. And the hollow-eyed comments by Dan Rather and other reports who had been working all day, and were beyond beautifying by their make-up units.
I couldn't help but feel for the workers who had gone in to their jobs, as I had, for a good day's work, but unlike me, never finished. Well, not in the way they would have preferred. And knowing how my own wife worried, felt for the families they left behind.
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