How to Brush a Cat

ANOTHER CAT VIDEO ON THE INTERWEBZ!

Watch on YouTube-- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ztl_MLxYhYE

How to Cram More Links into your Chrome Bookmarks Toolbar!

1) Google Chrome is a fast, light browser and the choice of awesome chicks everywhere. Like my mom.
2) Switch to Chrome! Unless you're a seasoned Firefox developer, in which case go ahead and bask in my respect.
3) Cramming even more bookmarks onto the toolbar in Chrome is SUPER EASY, I promise.

All right! Gaze upon the finished product:

There! I could easily stuff at least a dozen more bookmarks on there. To achieve this amazing space-saving feat:

1. Right-click on the item in the toolbar and select "Edit..."
2. Delete the content in the "Name:" field.

That's it! Do it for all your links. Then all you get is the favicon. Sites that don't have a favicon will show up as little globes, which adds excitement to your life as you try to unravel the mystery of where that icon will take you! A naughty site, perhaps? Your private blog? The suspense is beyond belief!

Bragging Break: My Fragrant Elephant Comics site now has a favicon! I did it allllllll by myself. Very proud.

In case you're interested, here is my chosen internet source for the Chrome tip.

Remember, it's Margarita Monday!*

*DISCLAIMER: Fragrant Elephant Blog is not responsible for any alcohol damage done to readers' livers as a result of reading this blog.

How to: Make Your Own External Hard Drive

Once upon a time, a princess and a frog prince went to the Micro Center to buy an external hard drive, to keep the holy MacBook Pro files backed up via Time Machine. But the prince, who ruled the kingdom of Do-It-Yourself and the duchy of You-Can-Get-That-For-Less, advised the princess to forget about paying $129.99+ for 500GB, and make her own external hard drive. So the princess, next in line to the throne of Okay-Honey-Whatever-You-Say, bought an enclosure.

You will need:

• a hard drive* ($59.99, now $99.99 because of the flooding in Thailand, home of hard drives)
• screwdriver
• 3.5" SATA to USB 2.0 enclosure ($15.99 on sale!)

*Boyfriend would like to make it known that he donated the hard drive, meaning I paid $0.**
**Note to self: do not blog while Boyfriend is peering over shoulder.

Step 1: 

Insert the hard drive into the enclosure.

Remember when you were a kid and had the game where you put the square blocks into the square holes and the round blocks into the round holes? Same thing, but with ~1 mm rectangular slits. Make sure to jam it in there tight.

Step 2:

Screw the hard drive into the enclosure.

Flip it over; the screws are at the bottom of the enclosure.

Step 3:

Screw the back panel into place.

Really? I have to explain this? Come on.

The following steps are optional:

Step 4:

Discover that enclosure doesn't work.

Step 5:

Have Boyfriend fix the problem by using his external hot-swap bay enclosure.

Step 6:

Take nap.

Step 7:

Return busted enclosure and pat self on back for job well done.

In other news: Boyfriend's cat tried to get into the shower with me. Perv.

How To: Save Candles

Let's say you like candles because they smell nice, or because you don't want to kill house guests and pets when you pass gas. Great. But after they burn for a little while, candles tend to look like this:

The wick's self-preservation instincts in action.

But despair not! You can still get mileage out of those precious Yankee Candles. You will need the following items:

• pot
• butcher's twine
• tongs
• round cookie cutter(s)

Step 1: Boil water in a pot

Unless your name is Akane Tendo, there's no way you'll mess this up.

Step 2: Put the candle(s) in the boiling water.

The candles will float, but to ensure that they don't smoosh against the super heated metal and cause the glass to crack, you can put cookie cutters under them to keep them in place. In the picture below, the top candle is not cooperating. 

"I shall float freeeeeeeee!" 

Step 3: Remove from water

Use tongs, and be very, very careful. For the ladies: your man can help during this step.

Step 4: Combine the melted wax into one container.

A normal person would put down one candle, and then use the tongs to pour out the wax from the other candle. In this picture, Boyfriend is using his super power (weak nerve endings in fingers) to handle the hot glass. 

 Step 5: Suspend new wick.

First, dip the butcher's twine into the wax. Then tie it to something to suspend it above the glass. When it cools, cut it into an appropriate length.

The end result:

A candle with a new lease on life! <3

"Is this edible? No? Then take it away."

This blog post brought to you by Rabid Recyclers Inc.

D'oh!

I hate waiting. I'm impatient. I get bored easily. I like to zoom through life at the speed of a bumblebee, sometimes literally, since riding a bike downhill is faster than a bumblebee flies. I want to go zip-zip-zip from one thing to another. And for the most part, technology enables me: tabbed browsing, smart phones, portable gaming systems, etc are on hand to ensure that I'm always stimulated and raring to go.

One of the consequences of my preference for living life like a four-year-old on a steady diet of espresso beans and Coke is that I wreck things by not thinking anything through. When I was ten I broke my arm because I figured I only needed to see a new cartwheel technique once to master it. Wrong! When I was eighteen I thought I'd be faster at soccer on the beach if I had no shoes on. Right! Except my bare foot smashed into a gigantic German guy's rock-hard shin and my foot swelled to Donkey Kong size. When I was in a college summer program, I tested into a level of Japanese that I knew was too advanced for me, but accepted because all the fabulously gay men were in that level. D'oh! Homework took up to seven painful hours to do every night, and my brain melted. At my current job, I mindlessly accepted two overseas assignments that chipped away at my faith in humanity because of all the craziness and corruption.

The latest victim of my impatience is my external hard drive. To Boyfriend's dismay, I'd yanked the sucker out of my Mac without bothering to eject it properly. When I called him a couple days later to ask for help because my hard drive now kept shutting down my entire system, he speculated that my improperly pulling the cord caused it. At the time, I was like, "Nuh-uh, I've done it before and this never happened." But just now I plugged it into my Windows machine at work, which promptly informed me that I needed to run a disk check. ARGH!!! And at the rate it's going, it'll take the whole damn day! DOUBLE ARGH!!!

...Thank God for computer multitasking...