ShawnHavery.com

So I was just walking around campus listening to The Offspring’s The Meaning of Life when I passed a pair of those white-shirt-and-tie bible peddlers just as the chorus came in. Made me smile.

So right now I’m sitting at a Krystal in Gainesville, surfing the net whilst eating tiny burgers. Mmm…love those tiny burgers. I really don’t understand why they don’t open one of these in Tallahassee.

My girlfriend let me borrow her laptop for the weekend so that I could write this week’s article for the FSView. Of course it ended up taking all night again, and I didn’t get much else done. I’m on my way back home, and due to having this tiny computer to go with my tiny burgers, I decided to eat in rather than on the road as I usually do.

Free wi-fi is great. The computer automatically located the ‘Krystal_Wireless’ network, I hit ‘Connect’, and here I am. Exactly how it’s supposed to work, and a far cry from the “free wi-fi” at Starbucks, which as it turns out they only let you use if you buy one of their cards or some shit like that.

I headed to said establishment last night, ready to write my article. I had just bought a “venti” (apparently Italian for “stomachache”) Mint Mocha Chip Frappuccino and three pastries for the price of two (why did I fall for that trap?? They’re not even that good!), when I connected to their network only to find out that I needed a username and password. So I went up to speak with the power that be, and learned of the scam. Lovely. I just bought all this crap from you guys, and I still have to pay to use your internet? I informed them that they had lost a customer.

I returned to my seat to gather my stuff, idly pronouncing the situation to be “bullshit”. The girl in front of me — late teens, perhaps twenty at the oldest — spun around, her eyes wide with shock that I had said such a horrible thing out loud. Imagine: it’s only 2008, and people are saying “bullshit” in public? What has the world come to. Apparently Sarasota is even more conservative than I thought.

Thankfully, an old friend from way back in middle school who had recently found me on Facebook (oh the wonders of the information age!) let me stay at her place to use her internet and work on my article. She even fed me hot dogs. I am so lucky to have such great friends. Hundreds of miles away and over a decade lost in time, and people still care. It really helps to remind you that the world really isn’t such a terrible place after all.

Tiny burgers ravaged, I now press onward toward my rendezvous with the place that I presently call home. It may have been a short and less-than-productive trip, but I had fun. Also plenty of time to rock out in the privacy of my motorized conveyance, screaming at the top of my lungs to my favorite songs.

Rush into the fray once again…

(…and white, and hopefully read all over)

Has it really been almost nine months since my last post? Wow, nine whole months. How did that happen? No, I didn’t have a baby. I met someone, and I kinda sorta forgot about this whole blog thing. Incidentally, this is the same reason why all my carnivorous plants died back in the Spring of 2004. It turns out that if you don’t make it home for a whole week, and are thus unable to water your extremely drought-sensitive plants, they die. So I learned something that day.

However, the difference between a bunch of plants and a blog is that while the former is made up of mortal and most decidedly analog cells, the latter is composed of immortal digital bits. So, unlike most plants, in this brave new world of technology a website can always be resurrected. And so, my dear long-neglected and largely inutile blog (who the hell would care to know my opinion of some French cheese?), I hereby bring thee back into the realm of the living. With this post, I formally declare my intent to write regularly once again.

You may ask what prompted this change of spirit. You might speculate that it was a recent a return to the lonely — and yet, for a time, somehow vaguely awesome — life of the college bachelor, but you would be mistaken. I am still with said person, and very much hope it to stay that way. So what has changed? A few things:

Firstly, at the mathematically rockin’, proto-wise age of 3³, I am now at a point in my life where I’m growing tired of being superbly lazy. Although I still very much enjoy wasting the occasional day doing absolutely nothing productive, time and again I have returned to the realization that man cannot live on sloth alone. Too many times in my life I have given up on something simply because I got a little bored with it. I don’t want to do that anymore. In this vein, I also intend to practice my drumming skills much more frequently. If I am to have any hope of surpassing Neil Peart, I’ve seriously got to get on that right away.

Secondly, I am finally starting to convince myself that I, in fact, do not actually hate writing. I’ve always been pretty good at it, in much the same way that some musicians play their instrument brilliantly despite a lack of formal training or a knowledge of music theory, or how an athlete plays their sport well without possessing a deep understanding of the laws of physics. I don’t have a thorough comprehension of the rules of English grammar, which is almost a little surprising given my fetish for systems. I am not, however, a fan of excessively large sets of arbitrary rules with countless exceptions, so I had little interest in masting the language in an academic sense. Back in school, I barely paid attention in english class; it was my worst subject next to history, which, despite being interesting, contains way too many disparate facts for me to keep track of (again with the arbitrarity; oh how I love mathematics). But I do seem to have a real gift for pattern recognition, so I know from experience what sounds right, and what looks good on the printed page (or screen, as the case may be). I’ve been told on more than one occasion that I write well, but if you ask me how I do it, my response probably won’t be particularly helpful: “I dunno, it just sort of flows out of me.” (Unfortunately, this is also my approach to programming, so I tend to end up spending a lot of time tracking down bugs; admittedly not too many of them, but darn those little rascals are tricky to find.) One of my college professors who always gave essay exams even told me once that I could write textbooks; perhaps I will some day. For now, though, it’s enough for me to keep in mind that I don’t specifically hate writing: I simply have an innate disdain for any sort of activity that can be interpreted as work, particularly in getting started on any such endeavor. It has been a persistent roadblock to success throughout my life, and chipping away at that barrier continues to be a slow and frustrating process for me. I can try to blame my parents for rarely insisting that I do chores as a kid, but in the end it’s entirely my problem. Deal with it, Shawn.

Lastly, for a long time now I’ve admired popular scientific magazines such as Scientific American, Discover, and Astronomy. I’ve always been impressed with their readability despite their high knowledge (and ad) content, and the fact that they can be found at nearly any grocery store is a testament to the refreshing fact that, apparently, people other than me actually read them. These periodicals play an important role in helping to educate the public about science, and given my ability to get my point across in words, coupled with my broad knowledge in so many branches of science, I am positive that I could make valuable contributions to such a publication. To this end, I recently took the first steps toward my future career as a science writer: I am now writing science articles for Florida State University’s newspaper, the FSView. Despite “having to write” every week (and getting paid peanuts to do it), I’m actually quite enjoying the experience. I get to work on precisely the types of articles I like to write, plus being a science reporter has a definite advantage over some other areas of the news in that I typically don’t have too much difficulty getting interviews with sources for a story. What scientist wouldn’t want to draw attention to their research? The only issue is that these science types are frequently away doing field work, but of course there’s always phone calls, email, and, of course, the tireless dedication of the lowly grad student. Another bonus is that I learn something new each time. You can read my first two articles here and here; my third article comes out next Monday. I’m in the paper every week this Summer, and will be writing two articles per week beginning in the Fall. Clearly, I had to start updating my blog again: when you’re trying to build a reputation as a competent writer, I’m pretty sure it doesn’t help if you have a blog that’s covered in nine months worth of dust. Hopefully by the time I’m seeking employment with another publication, nobody will take notice of the dark ages of ShawnHavery.com.

So, after the better part of a year of neglect, my blog is, with any luck, alive once again. Scratch that; I don’t believe in luck. It’s alive, dammit! As a wise little green dude once said: “Do, or do not, there is no ‘try’.”

Keenan, feel free to punch me.

Fake blo-o-od
You scare me like the real thing
And if you were the real thing
You’d scare me mo-o-ore

So pour it o-o-on
Like it’s the real thing
Fake blo-o-od
You rock me like the real thing (yea-ah-h)

From Griffiths, Introduction to Electrodynamics:

“If a cavity surrounded by conducting material is itself empty of charge, then the [electric] field within the cavity is zero.…This is why you are relatively safe inside a metal car during a thunderstorm―you may get cooked, if lightning strikes, but you will not be electrocuted.”

How comforting.

“The same principle applies to the placement of sensitive apparatus inside a grounded Faraday cage, to shield out stray electric fields. In practice, the enclosure doesn’t have to be a solid conductor―chicken wire will often suffice.”

And that’s why I get such a crappy cell phone signal from within the stucco walls of my apartment. Hooray for science.

Well, uh, there’s a key, I mean, actually, it’s not really a key, it’s made of hair, of follicles, y’know, but I mean, I could look at a point on the wall and crawl right inside. Well, I mean, actually, that’s only sometimes. I mean, sometimes it’s too sticky, but, y’know, he is not my friend, not at all. No sir. I mean, actually, there’s something over us, inside the air. It’s very funny, actually, I was talking, y’know, at “inappropriate times”, y’know, my mom says “better use the pencil, not the crayon”, but I actually think red isn’t the color of blood anymore. I mean, everything is different. You guys have really changed. You should think about that.

With all the quantum confusion consuming me of late, this made me laugh.

Glad to see that the folks at Williams Street are doing their homework, even if I’ve been putting mine off.

Brie is a pleasantly soft, delightfully creamy and exceptionally delicious cheese, but do not eat too much of it without first removing the MoldCrust™ (yes, I know this is sacrilege). Though the stuff may be quite tasty in an “I’ve definitely always wondered what it would be like to eat a swimming pool” sort of way, it has its drawbacks. If I wished to endure the fascinating sensation of ammonia on my breath upon every life-affirming exhale, I would have some Salmiakki.

Wasabi, take me away. You restore olfactory purity from all things.

Yes, it would appear that I have finally joined the infopinion revolutionspace, if only about a decade late. That is, of course, if you don’t count my mindnumbingly out-of-date and most decidedly dead LiveJournal (you don’t have to click on that, I just thought I ought to take advantage of this newfangled “internet” business and whatnot).

Hopefully I’ll update this thing a bit more frequently now that there’s a slight chance I’ll have something noteworthy to say. Maybe.