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Review and 9/11 thoughts
Sep. 11th, 2006 04:43 pmHad my second annual review at Microsoft today. All-in-all it went very well, and plenty of good feedback for things to improve. With the switch mid-year to an entirely new division, I was a bit worried the former Windows folks would get hosed in the stack-ranking but thankfully it didn't turn out that way.
Yay me. Yay high-paying enjoyable steady work.
I'm sure the television stations and websites are chock full of 9/11-related memorial stuff today with stories of what may or may not have lead up to the attacks, the world since, geopolitics, history (both factual and revisionist), etc. For the most part, I'm trying to not pay any attention to it and particularly not what the Prez decides to spin about that day during his speech given how much the Republicans have used it to justify their political agenda since then. Whether history will judge 9/11 as a Pearl Harbor-style unprovoked sneak attack on America or more as a Gulf of Tonkin-style excuse for a desired war is I think still up for debate.
Five years ago I was in the midst of a long-term bought of unemployment, new to a city where I knew no one, dating a girl long-distance who was already beginning to be withdrawn and stressed by the start of an entirely new career, and had way too much time on my hands to watch the hour-by-hour CNN coverage of the whole sad affair. In many ways, it wasn't ever real to me. At the time I didn't know anyone who lived in NYC. Andrea had been there a few weeks before, standing on those very towers, so it certainly could have been a very personal event had the timing been different. I didn't have friends and co-workers around talking about the people they knew touched by the events, and I was immensely isolated as it was. As it stands, I mostly just remember the sense of fear. The entire country held it's breath for a month. Really not much outrage, and more fear of an uncertain future. That was also something I felt keenly at the time in my own life.
Yay me. Yay high-paying enjoyable steady work.
I'm sure the television stations and websites are chock full of 9/11-related memorial stuff today with stories of what may or may not have lead up to the attacks, the world since, geopolitics, history (both factual and revisionist), etc. For the most part, I'm trying to not pay any attention to it and particularly not what the Prez decides to spin about that day during his speech given how much the Republicans have used it to justify their political agenda since then. Whether history will judge 9/11 as a Pearl Harbor-style unprovoked sneak attack on America or more as a Gulf of Tonkin-style excuse for a desired war is I think still up for debate.
Five years ago I was in the midst of a long-term bought of unemployment, new to a city where I knew no one, dating a girl long-distance who was already beginning to be withdrawn and stressed by the start of an entirely new career, and had way too much time on my hands to watch the hour-by-hour CNN coverage of the whole sad affair. In many ways, it wasn't ever real to me. At the time I didn't know anyone who lived in NYC. Andrea had been there a few weeks before, standing on those very towers, so it certainly could have been a very personal event had the timing been different. I didn't have friends and co-workers around talking about the people they knew touched by the events, and I was immensely isolated as it was. As it stands, I mostly just remember the sense of fear. The entire country held it's breath for a month. Really not much outrage, and more fear of an uncertain future. That was also something I felt keenly at the time in my own life.
