That morning…
I woke up on the couch, by my feet with an always on laptop aka a server. Computers, programming, and nerd curiosity were big with me. The night before I had passed out from exhaustion doing usual activities on a young internet. Woke up earlier than usual, typically noon or later was when I naturally got up. A beeping noise kept going off, my self made scripts had built in noise to alert me when certain events occurred on the network or any place I was connected with. My name kept getting mentioned, server connections higher than normal on OZMatrix, DALnet, Undernet, others where either my bots or active applications were monitoring. OZMatrix was a IRCX multi server network a friend created, I was the glue to put it all together beyond a domain registration.
So I get up and read the first active screen which was the OZMatrix server, stuff appearing was very odd. !myname !myname over and over “get up”, a very small group of users knew my schedule of all night activities. “This is a very sad day for the US”, “It looks like terrorism“, and this type of text was appearing. Around this time it was when the second plane had hit, thats what finally made “enough internet noise” to “wake me”. I read some of this, turn on the news which was on 24/7 at my place usually. Yea it was definitely very shocking still to this day.
I see what is happening, watching this non stop eyes glued to TV. Then the nerd in me woke up, I connect to “servers all over the net”. Pull logs and filter out data aka scrape everything to do with this event before the attacks. I found some servers online with celebratory activities, most extending condolences. A few minutes later the first tower fell, this is when the moment became something else not the “planes crashing” but the building “falling” into a cloud. I was getting more angry “by the minute” while it was happening, especially after seeing “some people” cheering.
Below is a side story with some relation…
So one of my online friends was a reporter in NY, she was super curious but total non techy, “just a chick” that “hung out in IRC”. She would end up interviewing many of the victims families, saw a “change in her” around this time which may have been a part of things later. A few years later we became much closer friends until she suddenly “died”, actually thought she ghosted me at first. She was surely getting the 411 from people all the time, it “was in her” nature. “Who knows” what she was working on but she is mi“ss”ed.
Previously a Chinese based appearing hacker “tried to disrupt” our little network and send a message. They weren’t after the servers, they were upset and poor sports over losing some nerd activities. You can’t beat my bots, “ever”! The reporter knew of this event because she was into everything of course which may have motivated her activities.
This side story is missing some context for privacy reasons, end abruptly at parts, and other “stuff”.