In the middle of dinner, President Bush's address to the nation came on. He vowed to get the culprits. He named the targets and the country. He was coming for them. This bolstered some of the CIOs' spirits, who agreed there was serious hell to pay and it was headed to Afghanistan. The speech didn't do much for me. I didn't think it would be easy to catch the bastards. And even if we did, it wouldn't undo what happened.

The next day as we bobbed there out at sea, forbidden to return to any port, the conference tried gamely to continue where it left off, but I attended none of the sessions. I couldn't. Later that night, the captain told us we received permission to put ashore in Boston Harbor, and we were heading there immediately at full power. I was going home.

The next morning I woke to see the little islands in Boston Harbor gliding by as we made our way to Black Falcon Terminal. I was never so happy to see them. I had my bag ready and I was the second person off that ship. I got a taxi and went straight to the offices of CIO magazine. I learned that one of the magazine's writers had a brother who'd been in the Tower on a floor above the impact zone. He got out miraculously. One of our senior editors had a family friend who'd been on one of the two planes that had left Boston. He took time off to attend the funeral and memorial service. My brother-in-law was OK; he'd had to walk across the Brooklyn Bridge to escape the devastation. He still lives in the Borough. As I anticipated, my mother had been hysterical, but Carolyn had calmed her. She still worries when I travel.

Our first 9/11 magazine story was about how Gregor Bailar, then CIO of NASDAQ, was thrust into the position of making the decision to shut down the markets. I wrote it in a tag team effort with Senior Editor Tom Field, and it ran on Friday on cio.com, the first time a CIO story appeared on the Internet prior to coming out in print.

A lot has changed in 10 years. Too much hasn't.