I was at work. Someone came in at about 9 saying to the guy in the cubicle next to him, "Hey, did you hear about the plane crashing into the World Trade Center?" My first thought was "Wow, how bad a pilot do you have to be to hit a big building like that." In my mind the plane was a Cessna. It wasn't. No work really got done that day. Everybody was trying to figure out what was going on. The news sites on the web were swamped. You simply couldn't get through. Then CNN put up the low bandwidth version and we learned that two planes had struck. Then a tower had collapsed. Then the other. I went up to the lunch room briefly; they had set up a television. I saw the smoke coming from the Pentagon. None of it was real though, not yet. It hadn't sunk in. It wouldn't sink in until I got home. The TV was on all night. I first saw the video of the collapses at about 5:30. The words "HOLY CRAP!!!" went through my mind. It still hadn't really hit me though. Then I was flipping through the channels and I came to MTV. They weren't on the air. They're based in Manhattan. They had other things on their mind. For some weird reason that's when it really hit me. I don't know why it was then, it really seems so trivial, MTV not being on the air, but that's when the whole situation went from being simply pictures on a cathode ray tube to being real. That's when the human tragedy of it all sunk in. That's when I cried.

I don't claim to have been anywhere near the most affected... nobody I know died there... only one person I know was even in the vicinity... I'm probably not even in the top half... but everyone was affected. Everyone. And it's important that everyone remember what happened that day, what it meant, what we've learned.

I hope everyone can remember and honor those that died that day, especially those who gave their lives so that others might live.

I hope we've all learned a thing or two about what we're up against... that people want to kill us... that people want to end our way of life... that these people have no qualms about harming the innocent… that these people's hatred drives them to do the inconceivable... that these people must be fought with every ounce of our determination and that our determination must not falter until the job is done.

I hope we never forget.