Audible - Brendan McKenna

Its the 26th of May, less than a month away from the summer solstice and it feels like winter is coming! A beautiful day for walking around in long pants, a scarf and sipping on a large coffee from the wonderful coffeefool.com or your local starbucks.

My MacBook is spinning its fans like crazy at the moment, why? I’m not sure… but maybe it’s second life running that is causing the fans to spin like wild, sure enough I just pulled up Activity Monitor and Second Life was using 101% of my cpu, look:

I’ve been reading and learning about Online communities today, World of Warcraft, Second Life, FaceBook, Orkut, Flickr, Last.fm, Myspace, Star Wars Galaxies, City of Heroes etc.

What are you on?

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Wow, Nine days since my last post! That explains why a google search for “Brendan McKenna” has buried this awesome blog below a whole lot of other nonsense that has not very much to do with me.

So whats been happening? I’ve been moving into my new place at Haight Street in San Francisco, I’ve rearranged the room for better feng shui and given Lola the cat her own space (though she seems to like the space beside me for unknown reasons…)

I’ve bought a great new iSight webcam for my Mac, I’ve taken Lola to the Vet to get her check up, and I spent the weekend upgrading Macs.

Time has just been zipping by and writing a blog has just been tough to do, I think I may need an assistant.

Email me for more news from the last week as there’s tons. I’m just rushing out at the moment and can’t type a thousand word piece.

Song of the day? Complicated!

 Complicated - Avril Lavigne [4:05m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

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Ben and I discussed Apple upgrading at the Genius Bar today. Apple sells great computers and gives the best service and support at their Genius Bar and more recently their Creative Bar.
Alongside the great comfort that the Genius Bar provides, there is the fact that despite their great skills in assembling and dissassembling Apple Hardware, they won’t perfrom upgrades for anybody, so that allows a thriving community of Mac evangelists like me to perform Ram upgrades, Hard Drive Upgrades, Software Upgrades and even Optical Drive upgrades.
San Francisco is the home of Apple and so many people here use Macs that it’s proving to be a great business, providing expertise to Mac users. I’ve had a full week and with my outstanding Apple Portable Certification this morning, it looks like I’ll be busier and busier as time goes on. Thanks to all my clients for getting in touch this week and I look forward to more collaborations in the future!
I’ve set up http://www.auburncom.com for my San Francisco Apple Care Website, I hope you like it!

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Wow, The weekend came and the weather was beautiful, I spent Sunday at Baker Beach reading this great book about Naim Kattan growing up in Baghdad as a Jewsish Boy.

It’s Wednesday and Big Sis’s Birthday so a quick chat and card went well, this morning I dropped off the Powerbook that I repaired, it was hard to part with that beautiful aluminum machine but I still love my Baby White Macbook more.
I’ve got the Apple Portable Exam on Friday so will have my nose buried in the books till 9am Friday and be getting some nice sleep.
Patricks day paradee is on Saturday but I won’t make it down for that
Apple is doing great, I brought Erin down there to buy some speakers and the shop was busy as always, good service too, she eventually bought these JBL On Stage Micro ones as she quite liked my own JBL On Tours which aren’t available any more!

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You didn’t ask but here they are iTunes users can click on the show name to get more info and subscribe.

Maccast - http://maccast.com (Ultra geeky and Mac focused)

The Merlin Show http://themerlinshow.com (New and actually not TOO geeky, the latest episode is a chat with an indie rocker)

NPR Wait Wait Don’t tell me http://www.npr.org

BBC Nightly News Video Podcast - http://www.bbc.co.uk/news Unbiased news from the BBC

Correct me if I’m wrong by the San Francisco Chronicle - http://www.sfgate.com Relatively New two minute podcasts of Irate readers who call up and leave bizarre messages.

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From our discussion earlier, we agree that being secure in a relationship allows openness to sexual experimentation with third (or fourth parties), this theory is confirmed by a quite smart Nurse/Counselor called Kathy Labriola and she discusses lots of interesting points on her site but spends an entire page on ‘MANAGING JEALOUSY IN OPEN RELATIONSHIPS’ and explains in the second paragraph that

“Jealousy is about fear–fear of the unknown and of change, fear of losing power or control in a relationship, fear of scarcity and of loss, and fear of abandonment. It is a reflection of our own insecurity about our worthiness, anxiety about being adequate as a lover, and doubts about our desirability.”

Henceforth, a secure enough person or persons will be able to manage their fears or hopefully have no fears at all and in these circumstances, the relationship is then strong enough to endure openness. Kathy goes on to explain that in a lot of cases she’s dealt with, one of the couple had insecurities about another aspect of their lives and that the affair or indulgence that the partner engaged in was only a trigger that upset the insecure person.

Its quite a subject to understand and rests on the security of individuals in relationships, of course greater security and confidence are almost always good things in any adventure we  embark upon, so the main lesson is to be strong, believe in yourself, conquer your fears and live each darn day!

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Some call me a ‘joiner’, and I guess it’s true, I joined myspace, friendster in the past. Joined flickr (for very good reasons), joined zooomr (for pretty good reasons), but today after reading 43folders.com, I noticed Merlin Mann had set up a tumblelog and browsed tumblr.net, it looks like a great site and method for tumblelogging and signed up over there, tumblelogging is apparently a more casual and informal way of blogging, who knew it could get MORE casual than a blog? But it IS very nice for posting quotes, pictures, conversations and videos to. Following on from tumblr, I discovered vox.com, which seems to be VERY similar to livejournal, but I signed up there too. So I’ve got this blog, Brendan’s Vox page and tumblebrendan. And what does all this do? Just increase web presence. But isn’t that what it’s all about

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With two mini-me dogs the size of wienerschnitzels barking at each other beside me, I write this post;

I had a really pleasant flight up from LA and it took such a short time! The sun was setting and there was a really gorgeous rainbow of colors in the sky, the airline I used is called frontier and is really good, they serve nice drinks, use small planes (22 rows) and have live satellite tv (directv) for each seat. I was halfway through an nbc show that I’d begun before take off when the pilot said we’re 30 minutes outside SF and beginning our descent. I was shocked and delighted, getting between SF and LA is so easy by plane and just makes me happier that I’ve postponed my flight to Dublin. I called Rye and Ewan at the hostel and let them know I’ll be in tonight and they were surprised and happy.

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I’ve been considering staying a little longer in San Francisco ever since I stayed in the Mission district on my first night there with William, its a really nice area with Valencia street full of laid back coffee shops, boutique stores and used book stores. I got to stay there again after hospital when a friend let us use his place for a week, Its freakin fun down there and I guess I have toyed with the idea of putting off my flight till some time in March since Aer Lingus sent me my itinerary for Dublin.And thats why I didn’t pay attention to that Itinerary! As a result, I’ve discovered while sitting here in LAX at 9am that my flight out of LA isn’t till 5pm! Giving me time to write this post and consider my options.

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