anil dash
A couple of things that I should let you all know:
The most healing thing I've been able to focus on was the discussion I had last Sunday night. Two good friends revealed what I had suspected, that their marriage is going to yield a surprise baby in a few months. I was in their wedding. The groom is one of my oldest friends, whom I met on my 5th birthday, which means that the other day marked a full 21 years that we've been friends. And now this guy, whom I still think of as a young doofus kid like me, is gonna have a kid of his own.
It's something I've only done a few odd times since I've lived in Manhattan, but I got off of the train on the way back from their apartment Sunday night and instead of transferring right to the train to take me home, I wandered around the extreme southernmost parts of downtown. My wanderings took me to about 2 blocks from the World Trade Center, although i honestly didn't spend as much time looking up at the towers as I now wish I had.
I kept looking back up at the Empire State Building, on the streets which had enough gaps between buildings to let me see it. I hate to say I prefer the ESB to the WTC, but a fella never forgets his first love, now does he? I had interviewed for a job a block away from the Center in April, and I took a look at that company's offices, too. All the while my mind was lost in the ruminations of what it is to make a life, to be a parent. How woefully unprepared I'd be for the same, and how ready, despite their own misgivings, my friends were. I walked around the streets for about 45 minutes before the preponderance of rats creeped me out sufficiently and I flagged a cab to take me back to somewhere near my familiar train stop.
At the time, I felt immature. My natural competitiveness made me feel like I should be at the stage of life that my friends are, that I had somehow gone off track because I didn't have what they have: a couple of Ivy League degrees, a nascent marriage, and a child on the way. But now... I guess everything changes. I am just truly, profoundly happy. I am lucky beyond desire or imagination. I am in the city I love. I have my family and my friends either immediately around me or just a phone call or email away.
Last Sunday, I thought that a child on the way was just good news from good friends. A week later, I think knowing of an impending birth may be the most profound, most hopeful thing that any of us could possibly be witness to. It's not something I say often, since I'm not a person who believes in religions or gods, but it's true: I'm blessed.
Go read this letter from Tamim Ansary on Caterina's site. Go read it now and tell your friends.
Then read about Usman Farman's experience. Read it and tell your friends.
Some good news: At Damien's behest, a gathering of New York webloggers (and friends). You can get all the info here, and this is an open invite to all in the community who want to attend.
It's time to live a little, get out there and take our city back. The venue may be subject to change if things below 14th Street are still blocked off, but we'll find a great place regardless, I'm sure.
This woman is not an American. This woman is of the same ilk as any terrorist who has visited destruction or hatred against innocents:
In light of all that is going on out there right now one big question comes to mind: Who in the hell is allowing all this middle eastern scum into this country that they can get away with this crap? All these people should be rounded up, put on a ship and set adrift in the ocean. It's time for the US to close it's doors to accepting every mongrel from outside countries into this country. If someone isn't a citizen of this country they need to be rounded up and removed from here and the doors to this country should be closed and locked. The US needs to drop the bomb on all middle eastern countries and eliminate them once and for all. Do I give a shit how many people would be killed over there?...no I don't.
Please know: You are not an American. You are not even, by my standards, human. You don't even have the barest grasp of what this country means, what it's about, why it exists. How perverse that you link to the Humane Society on your site, to the work of the good people who run Aortal and ID and Soul of the Web. But I'm better than you, and I won't ask you to leave my country. I will ask you to respect it, to learn its history and culture, and to perhaps try to become an American, and a human, yourself.
I would say I'd pray for you, but your pathetic understanding of what a religion is reveals that you are undeserving. I want to be so much better than you that I can say I'd forgive, but I think more honestly I'd smack you in your lying, hateful mouth for ever desecrating this country that way.
By her logic, we should bomb all Christian countries because Timothy McVeigh destroyed the Federal Building in Oklahoma City. You are a terrorist yourself, Lori Zavala. Think about it.
Fight the hoaxes: Give people real information. If you thought I was livid about spam from friends and co-workers before, you can probably imagine my response to those worthless morons sending around faux-Nostradamus quotes now. Now is not the time for bullshit like this.
There's still so much more that I can't deal with... I just came back in from outside, and I popped up the window with my webcam to check if it works now. And I didn't recognize myself because I have a face mask on. We all do, the smoke has gotten a bit thicker in the past few hours, the smell is worse. I can't believe it's us, looking like someone on TV.
I don't know if it even made the news outside of town, but last night there was a bomb scare at the Empire State Building. It turned out to be a false alarm, but they attributed the scare to a sniffing dog overreacting. I know that there is tons of extra security there right now, but the thing that immediately popped to mind was that I know that dog. Normally, there is just one bomb-sniffing dog at the ESB, and when I worked there, Remy and her trainer used to greet us almost every morning on the way in.
Thinking of that little black lab being the dog that might have triggered that evacuation was almost too much. My only image of that dog is her sitting quietly by the bank of elevators where I would go up to my office. If something had happened at the ESB, it would have just been more than I can handle at this point, I think.
I'm back at work. It took longer for me to get here to the East Village from the Upper East Side than it did for my co-worker to get to Manhattan from Philadelphia by Amtrak this morning. The smell is still here this far downtown, an acrid odor of burning plastic. I noticed it hanging over the city yesterday as some friends and I went to Central Park to play frisbee...
I caught myself laughing for the first time since the attacks last night. It startled me what a contrast it was, even though it was only some little joke I was laughing at. I am still sick as a dog, coughing and sneezing and the whole bit. But I really, really feel grateful for the chance to whine about having a cold. I look around, and some people on the streets here (and I mean people, there are no cars this far south, it looks like a bad sci-fi movie...) are wearing face masks. A woman here in the office has a bag and is offering them to people. Now, it's been less than a week since the two Michael Jackson concerts here, and I can't help but think that, ordinarily, I'd have a pretty good joke about that.
I wish so badly that I had someone to hold on to right now.
So I guess today will be the day when everything changed... I have had so many of the same conversations over and over. I want so badly to think of something else, but I just can't get past this. There has just been such an unrelenting parade of bad news that I am kind of numb to it. I think it only caps this day off that I've gotten sick now. I had a sore throat for a few days, but now I'm stuffed up, the whole deal.
Although, as I said to some friends earlier, I guess I should be grateful.
Those of you who know me well know that I'm passionate about this city, that I love the architecture and the grandeur and the dimension of it all. That, actually, may be the hardest part for me, as I don't have anyone I'm close to who I've lost. I have just lost an innocence about the city I love, the city I spent my whole life trying to get to.
I've been thinking a lot about how privileged I am to be here, how so much of the world lives with this kind of terror, albeit on a smaller scale, every day. And I know that to be true. But part of the allure of this city is its arrogance. New York City as an entity has a swagger and a brashness that appeals to the entrepreneur in me, to the upstart in me. And part of that mindset requires feeling invulnerable.
My experience this morning was kind of unusual. I had been working on a project for work all night, so I didn't go to bed until about 6:30. I somehow got up around 9 or shortly thereafter, which is decidedly atypical for me. I turned on the TV, which I almost never do, either, but I figured it would help me get up. Just as I was understanding the image on the screen of the north World Trade tower smoking, the second plane hit.
I had thought the first image was a fire at the towers, they've happened before and it's always hard to understand what's going on. But when the second plane hit, my sleep-addled brain thought that somehow it was a replay of whatever had caused the first fire.
I don't want to think of the skyline being different here. I am so heartbroken by this. I had always assumed I would have kids someday and would take them up to see the view at Windows of the World. The scale of it all boggles my mind.
Thanks so much to all of you who wrote, called, or left a message... It's helped tremendously. Right now I just want my city back. I had three hours' sleep last night, and I've been going ever since on just adrenaline. Now this cold is catching up to me, my stuffy, sniffling nose is a good mask for these fits where I threaten to start crying again... It's finally just time to sleep.
I talked about the view from my old office late last year. That view is gone forever...
I've got nothing new to say, I just wanted to hear from everybody. (39 comments)
So I'm still pretty shell-shocked. I got tired of the incessant TV buzz, and said "enough of this, I have to go out and get some fresh air, clear my head." I walked by my closet on the way out (keep in mind, a small Manhattan studio apartment) and the shelf and bar holding most of the contents of the closet collapsed. Somewhere around 90% of my worldly possessions spilled out onto the floor, and all of supports for the shelf are ripped out of the wall.
The universe has a pretty dark sense of humor. I am just hoping to have all of this stuff reassembled and pakced away before a couple of friends who are mass transit refugees arrive to sleep here for the night. I think the final thing to collapse today will be me.
Thank you so much to all of you who have messaged, emailed and called. (Or tried to.) I am physically fine, as are all my family members and immediate friends. I've been watching the footage all morning, I can't believe I watched the World Trade Center collapse... for those of you unfamiliar with New York, somewhere around 50,000 people or more work at the WTC Towers. I've been hearing sirens all day, although I live well north of the scene of the catastrophe, halfway up the island of Manhattan.
I've been sitting here this whole morning, choking back tears... this is just too much, too big. I can see the smoke and ash from the street here. I have friends of friends who work there, I was just there myself the day before yesterday. I can't process this all. I don't want to.
Also, to those of you who don't know, okra is not gross. The reason you've always thought it's slimy and disgusting is because, unlike someone as fortunate as me, you didn't grow up eating okra in Indian dishes. Try it again, at an Indian restaurant. That's how it's supposed to taste.
So right, it's scary: Over at WebWord, contemplate Google 2.0, the Google client. This meshes very nicely with some of the thoughts I've had recently about a universal information command line, network-aware and customizable. More on that later.
Milov always comes up with great ideas.
So InfoWorld's resident Jesus freak and one-trick open source pony Nick Petreley is leaving. I don't have anything against the guy, indeed he's been very cordial in the few emails I've exchanged with him over the years. But his habit for the past few years has been to incessantly rail against Microsoft, or proprietary software in general. And that kind of short-sightedness gets my goat.
While open source is certainly a valid, even essential, part of any company's software toolkit, it seems pointless to me to advocate any tool based on how it's made. When I used to do carpentry projects years ago, I'd pick a drill based on how powerful it was, and whether it was cordless, if that was important for the chore at hand. But would I give a damn what kind of factory it was made in? Would that make me pick Black and Decker over Craftsman? Nope.
So, uh... yeah.
BotSpot reviews and lists a hell of a lot of Bots for your enjoyment. And over here is another long list of bots. Fun!
Developed by Dr. Harold Edgerton in the 1940s, the Rapatronic photographic technique allowed very early times in a nuclear explosion's fireball growth to be recorded on film. The exposures were often as short as 10 nanoseconds, and each Rapatronic camera could take exactly one photograph.
So my birthday always means, to me, the beginning of autumn. Fall used to mean an ominous threat of shorter days and their concomitant long nights of moody funk. And not the good kind of funk. But now that I've been freed of so much of the threat and burden of chronic depression for a few years, i can just revel in the more subtle, beautiful pleasures of the season.
The lower angle of the sun in the sky makes the evening feel like it ought to, portending of nighttime and wishing I had brought a coat and, maybe, romance. All of this promise, but with no display so garish and obvious as springtime. Fall has an elegance and an understatement that I aspire to, being as clumsy and indelicate and blatant as I am.
So, yeah, I'm starting to like my birthday again, for the first time since my youth. Thanks so much to all of you who sent such kind words, thoughts, and gifts.
Just in case you're curious, or in case you like ugliness, you can disable style sheets on this page, ya know.
I've been remiss, Denise deserves much love for her generosity. I like nice people.
There's this theory that's been tumbling around half-formed in my brain for the past few days. I can't quite put my finger on it, but it basically has to do with the fact that two of the most pervasively adopted trends during the 1990s were the Internet and thong underwear on women. Both are damned near ubiquitous these days, both are suddenly common parts of our day-to-day life, and, for the record, I was an early supporter of both.
I will divine the cultural significance at some later date. Any insights? (16 comments)
Ummm, never mind about that whole other design thing. The detection code is a little screwed. This is because I suck.