Two Random Things

Here we have a post sharing two random things on this quiet Sunday evening that have nothing to do with anything anyone other than I would ever care about.

First, I watched an episode of The Trogly’s Guitar Show on YouTube today and accidentally learned something about my first Gibson guitar. It was a Les Paul Deluxe but I never learned what year it was made. Deluxes date from the late 60’s to the mid 80’s (I think). I bought mine in 1987 and always assumed it was from the late 70’s, but I had not learned how to get the manufacture date for a Gibson guitar until after my Deluxe was stolen in 1990.

Thanks to Trogly’s I can narrow the date down a little. The guitar had a Gibson chainsaw case. From a description on the episode I watched it was a version two chainsaw case. Trogly told us that Gibson introduced the version two chainsaw case in 1978. Therefore my guitar (assuming the case I had was the original case) could not have been built prior to 1978. That knocks about 10 years off of the possible dates. Thanks, Trogly!

The second item of note: The anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks is coming this week. That means Jen and I are in now entering our annual 9/11 remembrance period where we binge a shit load of documentaries. We’re watching the first of the season right now. Things have already been super heavy around here due to my father’s passing. Now it’s going to get heavier still.

I just felt the need to share all of that with the wider universe. You’re welcome.

World Trade Center

It took two tries, but we made it to the observatory on the 100th floor of the new World Trade Center tower. It was difficult. Not scary, just very emotional. There were a couple of moments when I was very close to breaking down. Wimp? Yes. Do I care? No.

See the plane?

I think this was the view that affected me the most. I remember seeing a lot of these buildings damaged by debris and I couldn’t help but think that this was the last view many of the jumpers had. It was a very intense feeling.

Memorial

9/11 Memorial

We tried to go up to the observatory in the new World Trade Center tower today. We didn’t. We’ll try again tomorrow. Unrelated to why we didn’t go up, my wife and I both had some difficulty while waiting in line for tickets. Somehow we each, when faced with the possibility of going to the top of the building that replaced the two that were attacked on 9/11, both got major cases of paranoia and cold feet. It was tough. It will be tough when we try again tomorrow too.

The kids didn’t understand, and they were getting upset with our flip flopping on going up vs not going up. I told them that for people who remember 9/11/01, going to the top of that building is just hard to do. For people who don’t remember the events of that day, it won’t really make sense. In the end we couldn’t get a ticket anyway so it didn’t matter (as mentioned, we’ll try again tomorrow) but in an attempt to make them understand, we walked over to the memorial.

I didn’t know any of the 9/11 victims, or any of their family. The one person I know who was caught up in the events made it out okay (physically at least). The only connection to a victim that I have is through work. One of the airline passengers worked for the company I work for now. It was three years before I was hired, but people still talk about her and the company posts a remembrance on our internal homepage every year. When I was first hired in July of 2004 I had my orientation in a training room in Canton that was named for her.

When I walked over to the memorial with the kids I tried to explain that the fountains are the size and shape of the buildings and they are located where the buildings actually stood. I said that was important, but the real important part was the names. I told them to look at the names and then try to understand that each fountain is completely surrounded by names. There are thousands of them. I was hoping that would sink in a little and maybe they’d get an idea of why their mother and I are so affected by everything.

As I looked down at the names that were right in front of us couldn’t believe it. That random spot on the corner of the North Tower fountain just happened to have the name of the woman who worked for my company. When I put my hand down on the list of names to try and emphasize the scale of the tragedy, it was her name I touched

My orientation was held in the Flyzik room.

CameraBag for Mac #2

Here are a few more filters out of CameraBag 2.5 for Mac. Today’s guinea pig is a pic from the 9/11 Memorial in New York.

Here’s the original:

This is a camera simulator called Cinema. It was another of my go-to choices on the iPhone app:

This one is new to me. It’s called Skater Camera. I kinda like this one:

This camera is called Autochrome:

This one is called Dusklight. Again, I likes it:

World Trade Center

The one site in New York that Jen and I both wanted to see this weekend was the World Trade Center site. My first thought was to see the new building. Jen’s first thought was the memorial. I didn’t think we’d be able to get tickets to get into the memorial but it was easy and they were free. Prepare to be bombarded with pictures from the site of the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

The new building is officially known as 1 World Trade Center, but unofficially known as the Freedom Tower. It is now the tallest building in the Western Hemisphere. Counting the height of the antenna on top, it is 1,776 feet tall. It’s not quite finished, but it is freakin’ gigantic.

I thought the construction elevator was cool for some reason. At this point I had my zoom lens on and I couldn’t get the entire building into one shot. I’ll fix that later.

You can see the one little section that still doesn’t have the glass outer wall.

1 World Trade Center won’t be the last building built. This is a construction site next door. I have no idea what this is.

The pictures so far were all taken in front of St Paul’s chapel. I’ll let the building describe the importance of the building.

During the chaos that was 9/11/01, we all heard about the church that stood right next to the twin towers and how it magically survived the collapses. This is that church.

Forgive me for getting a little off topic, but I love old cemeteries, and I love old cemeteries inside of modern cities, and I especially love seeing places in New York where the pre-skyscraper age sits next to the modern super skyscrapers. This is pretty much the perfect spot.

My favorite skyscrapers are glass skyscrapers, because you can get pics like this.

After we picked up our memorial tickets I was able to switch to the wider lens. Now you’ll get a little better idea of the size of the Freedom Tower. It’s a huge sucker.

I promise the street lights were not meant to be part of the shot. They just slipped passed my eyes.

I was a little disappointed that the line into the 9/11 memorial had to include a sign that said no guns or knives or weapons. That was one of those losing-faith-in-humanity moments.

The memorials speak for themselves. This was the site of the South tower.

This is the one tree that stood in the World Trade Center grounds on 9/11/01 that survived. It’s been moved a couple of times since then, but now it’s back where it belongs.

I told Jen that I hope someday this site becomes just another park where people go with their families. Humanity has a long, long way to go before we get there though.