Question: I have web pages that may or may not need to do some pre-processing before it can be displayed to the user. What I have done is to display this page with a message (e.g. "please wait ..."), then do an http-equiv refresh **to the same page**. When it refreshes to the same page, the pre-processing is done and the actual content is displayed.

Will this harm me in terms of SEO?

Answer: 
It's a hold over from C++ and C before that. In the C context, one of its meanings was for variables that keep their value between invocations. I presume that's where 'static' comes from - it doesn't reset the value (as opposed to a const where the value cannot change)
In Head First Java, there is a nice explanation of static. Static means stable not changing thats obvious from meaning and its quite obvious that it does not change.

Static mean sharing in Java. There is a nice picture where two child sharing one ice cream and showed static variable analogy. For more info please read Head First Java.