begin rant

For the curious, I will be available for entertaining in the town of Gainesville this long weekend. For my efforts as a volunteer at a Florida alumni barbecue held on the property the other weekend, my name was entered into a hat for two tickets to the first game of the season.

I have never won anything in a lottery before, so I sort of feel obligated to attend. As a friend of mine went to Western Kentucky for his undergrad, I feel obligated to drag him along and witness his conflicted loyalties. More importantly, this offers an excellent opportunity for a sociological study of crowds. Sometimes one has to experience this kind of group mentality and enthusiasm raw and in person to really feel it. Now that I think about it, and now that I have space for it, I could probably afford to pull a few things out of storage, too...

Posted by Derksen at 6:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I have officially moved into new digs.

In some ways, they aren't much of an improvement. The walls are still choked with mildew and mold, and my allergies are just as outrageous every morning.

In other ways, there has been a vast improvement in my quality of living. I now have twice as much floorspace in my room, taller ceilings, and carpets. I also have one less roommate to share the main living space with. Not altogether unreasonable. I mean, aside from the purple carpets and the pink curtains.

Photos forthcoming.

Posted by Derksen at 11:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

"For me, a symbol of that state is a Bedouin mounted on a camel and clad in traditional robes under which he is wearing jeans, with a transistor radio in his hands and an ad for Coca-cola on the camel's back. I am not ridiculing this, nor am I shedding an intellectual tear... I see it rather as... proof that SOMETHING is happening, something is being born, that we are in a phase when one age is succeeding another, when anything is possible."
- Václav Havel, The Need for Transcendence in the Postmodern World

Posted by Derksen at 12:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

If graduate school has taught me nothing else, I now read the "materials and methods" sections of papers with far more scrutiny than in the past. I make too many assumptions about how sensible a scientist might be while performing an experiment.

Posted by Derksen at 9:10 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

As a person who does not often rise early to see the dawn, I appreciate mornings.

Even when I am forced out of bed by the inevitable: work, a meeting, a flight, somewhere else I need to be... I appreciate the morning. Those early hours where the road is empty, the sky is clear, and the world is yours, and yours alone. A moment to breathe. A pause before battle. A chance to sample birdsong, and reassemble the moments of the night before. One last opportunity to collect yourself and reconsider the week that preceded you before facing the days that are to follow.

Time to drink your coffee.

As one who fails to rise early, I also appreciate breakfast. I prefer to share it with friends. You can share the recovery of events and reconnect with groggy honesty. The intimacy and the shared secrets of a conveniently local diner. There is often bacon, and someone to pass the sugar for your coffee. If you're truly lucky, there are sometimes even migas on the menu.

So: here is to breakfast.

Salutations, old friend.

Posted by Derksen at 10:26 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

There are a few things about Homestead worth noting:

• At night (so long as you are not facing Miami, and it is not raining) you can see the stars.
• There are moments and spaces here where the grounds are actually quite pretty. Exotic tropical plants help.
• There sure are a hell of a lot of critters crawling around in the undergrowth to entertain an amateur naturalist.
• There are still sunsets every evening.
• I always did say I wanted a job where I spent half the day outside, and the other half inside the lab analyzing data. Almost the right job, but nothing in the world beats data.
• Every day, I have more data.

Posted by Derksen at 4:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

You know what I really want right now?

I desire a hamburger.

I crave it.

Mightily.

A half-pound of medium rare meat with a slab of cheddar cheese, slathered with jalapeños and barbecue sauce, all contained within a toasty warm bun, and topped with a freshly sliced tomato. I do not believe that this is too much to ask for, and at some point, I must go in quest of this reward.

Posted by Derksen at 6:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

"Until a man is twenty-five, he still thinks, ever so often, that under the right circumstances he could be the baddest motherfucker in the world. If I moved to a martial arts monastery in China and studied real hard for ten years. If my family was wiped out by Colombian drug dealers and I swore myself to revenge. If I got a fatal disease, had one year to live, and devoted it to wiping out street crime. If I just dropped out and devoted my life to being bad.

Hiro used to feel that way, too, but then he ran into Raven. In a way, this is liberating. He no longer has to worry about trying to be the baddest motherfucker in the world. The position is taken. The crowning touch, the one thing that puts true world-class badmotherfuckerdom totally out of reach, of course, is the hydrogen bomb. If it wasn't for the hydrogen bomb, a man could still aspire. Maybe find Raven's Achilles' heel. Sneak up, get a drop, slip a mickey, pull a fast one. But Raven's nuclear umbrella kind of puts the world title out of reach.

Which is okay. Sometimes it's all right just to be a little bad. To know your limitations. Make do with what you've got."
- Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash

Posted by Derksen at 5:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)