Where were you then, Where are you now

Word is that the fun sections of the official SL Forums are finally, officially closed. I would like to thank LL for officially pissing me off. Many folks deprecated the General and Sandbox areas of the SL forums. I was not one of them. I like to think I wasn't a total asshole and that some of my contributions could be seen as valuable, be they informative, humorous or just another puzzle piece in the overall forum community. I felt that way about almost every other poster. They were part of the whole, even the people that drove me insane with illogical posts, personal attacks and ideologies that were the polar opposite of my own. I wouldn't have had it any other way. I love to hear what people have to say, even when I disagree. It helps me gain perspective and it hones my own stances. It provides a complete experience.

As of now, I have no official SL Forums, little connection to LL (as I just don't care to read the blogs), and a wonderfully buggy snapshot experience that has made my SL trekking a good deal less enjoyable. My next blahg entry on Burning Life, complete with snapshots, is dragging as I couldn't take snapshots and read notecards during the same logon period without crashing. I will have to take another trip to BL in order to get some worthwhile information to go with my snapshots.

I feel angry, saddened and disassociated.

Which brings me to 5 years ago today....

I heard The News while at work on that September morning. My workday did not come to an abrupt end, but continued for much of the day, albeit with much more apprehension than I would normally expect in a typical working day. Having heard that my NYC relatives were fine, I was left tending to the kind of daily business that could be termed "second-tier, essential daily work" - the sort of thing that isn't life-and-death, but that should get done if at all possible. Things that many people assume never get interrupted. I was not watching the events unfold and was not viewing the footage repeated and discussed ad nauseam.

When I finally left the building, at around 2PM US Central, I was confronted with a deserted downtown Chicago. Deserted, that is, except for a plethora of heavily armed police and federal agents. Though at the acme of my emotional barometer and, of course, in a different league than today, I nevertheless felt angry, saddened and disassociated.