Aug 10 2006
ShoeMoney

Holy Crap Alarms And Machine Guns At The San Jose Airport

19 people have said their piece on this post. What say you?

My wife, 7 week old baby, business manager and photographer had already flown earlier this morning out and told me to expect 2-3 hour delays for security after the events this morning in London. It was kind of a zoo getting into the airport. I got here pretty early and it took about 2 hours to get to my gate. They made me throw away my Cool Water Cologne like i guess incase they thought the ever so good smelling cologne was also an explosive liquid.

I finally get to my gate and chill out. I am sitting talking to this nice lady next to me who asks me what I do for a living (isnt that always fun) when all of a sudden this ear piercing alarm sounded. It was like so loud… Then we heard a loud “EVERYONE GET ON THE GROUND NOW”. I hit the deck and was like ZOMFG WTFBBQ….

Quickly the gate was filled with men in uniformed armed with machine guns. I never officially heard a “its ok to get up now” I guess I was to busy thinking about my wife and baby and what would happen if I was about to die. I did happen to have a terminal window open and told all my homies on #havok: Here is what I typed from my log-

OMG LOUD ALARM
HOLY SH*T DUDES WITH MACHINE GUNS
O WOW MORE DUDES WITH MACHINES GUNS
IM GONN TAKE A PIC

Anyway people got up around me and so did I but I quickly grabbed my camera and took a picture of some of the armed Airport Security dude. Its just weird seeing some guy pack serious heat when I can’t get through with some cool water cologne on me.

When i snapped the pic I had the flash on and he looked over at me like he was SERIOUSLY PISSED OFF. Good thing my camera did not look like a gun… I zoomed in on him and got a close-up with the flash off.

Evidently the whole cause of this was a little girl opened the doors that say, “DONT OPEN OR ALARM WILL SOUNDâ€? , that set off the alarm. OUPS.

What a wrap-up to a ultra exciting Search Engine Strategies.

  1. Chris said on August 11th, 2006 at 12:49 am

    Bro! That is hilarious! Glad to hear SES was exciting!

  2. Andreas Kraus said on August 11th, 2006 at 4:18 am

    That’s really crazy, but otherwise it’s good to have that high degree of security. Even in Germany the security measures were tight up. I weren’t allowed to bring any hand luggage on the flightplane either..

  3. Peter said on August 11th, 2006 at 4:22 am

    Shoe, you certainly know how to live the life!
    Shame about the cologne, at least they didn’t make you drink it.

  4. chaabant said on August 11th, 2006 at 9:05 am

    hehe !

    This is hilarious …hmmm not when you have a family with you of course .

    Same thing happened but this time was when i was in a plane going from Philadelphia to Montreal and it was on 1 January …

    Guards entered the plane and came to me asking me to leave the plane !? why ? because i was an Arab :)
    poor me .

    They made the plane wait for 25 Mn’s for investigations issues … then they let me go ..

    so we all are paying the price of the stupid bush and bin laden

  5. James said on August 11th, 2006 at 10:09 am

    It’s an assault rifle, not a machine gun.

  6. Tom V said on August 11th, 2006 at 11:30 am

    I don’t know if posting those pictures is such a smart idea.

    I saw on the news that people got arrested for taking pictures of soldiers/police officers, all because it comprised their security.

    Anyway, thats scary dude, stay safe.

  7. Rex said on August 11th, 2006 at 11:34 am

    OMG! that is crazy

  8. Dave said on August 11th, 2006 at 12:32 pm

    Stupid parents.

  9. dillsmack said on August 11th, 2006 at 2:38 pm

    I’m sitting in SJC right now waiting for my flight. I was vigilant enough to take anything banned out of my laptop bag. Then what did I do? Tossed one of my colognes into my laptop this morning without thinking about it. Didn’t realize it until I took my MacBook out for screening. So I left it in to see if they’d see it on x-ray. Did they catch it? Oh yeah.

  10. KevinJB said on August 11th, 2006 at 3:08 pm

    Holy crap you were on IRC rofl xD

  11. Rory said on August 11th, 2006 at 4:56 pm

    News at 9
    Little girl raises terror alert threat level to double red.

  12. SteveJ said on August 12th, 2006 at 3:33 pm

    lol, what a story. Glad it was nothing serious though….although little girls are pretty dangerous….

  13. Kn10 said on August 14th, 2006 at 7:23 am

    Hehe, a true geek. Guys come in with assault rifles making you hit the floor and you are typing away on IRC telling your friends about it. :)

  14. DaveN said on August 14th, 2006 at 9:08 am

    Pussy … when the alarm went off you should have shouted…

    “Derka Derka.. Die Terrorist MF’s” and charged the men with guns !!!

    ok you would have been shot dead, but at least you would have been a Hero

    DaveN

  15. Simon said on August 16th, 2006 at 1:39 pm

    Haha wonderful! Love the geekyness of this post!

  16. Nii A. said on August 21st, 2006 at 12:41 pm

    Where is the picture!?!

  17. Charlie said on August 23rd, 2006 at 11:19 am

    Yea… sure would like to see the pix!!!

    Charlie
    iliketospamlinks.com

  18. Not John said on April 13th, 2008 at 4:46 pm

    Scary, that could have ended badly.

  19. My SES-San Jose 2006 Experience | SEOdisco said on April 1st, 2007 at 3:14 pm

    [...] back to my hotel and quickly pack after I discovered that my flight was at 4:45p and there was some crazy security stuff going [...]