Manual Override

I did some more digging around on the Internet and found a solution to the problem I was having on the Surface Pro with the Wacom drivers and my mouse.
It actually ended up being something that I had considered trying, though I hadn’t, as I’d just gotten sick of dealing with it and uninstalled the Wacom drivers.  I decided to give it a shot after seeing that someone else had done it and, confirming my suspicions, gotten it to work.
As I thought, the problem was that for some reason the Wacom drivers overwrote the drivers for the mouse, which caused the mouse to not work, as it isn’t a Wacom device.
The solution was to open up Device Manager, right-click on the “Wacom Device” that showed an error, choose to update the driver, then manually browse to the correct driver file.
Boom.
I’m still annoyed, however.

****

Confused Jon Is Confused Department:
This morning when I got up, after getting dressed in my workout clothes and brushing my teeth, I went out to start my car, as, despite the eventual warmth of the day, the early morning hours are still chilly, and then headed back inside, so that I could go back outside to the patio and smoke a cigarette while the car warmed up.  On the way back in I noticed that there was a package next to my door.
”That wasn’t there when I got home yesterday,” I thought.  Then, “Did I order something?”
I remembered that I had, but the thing I had ordered was a T-shirt, and while I’ve encountered my share of excessive packaging, this rather large box seemed especially excessive.
”Maybe it was left here by mistake,” I thought, but upon bringing it inside and inspecting it – determining that it was too heavy to be a shirt – I confirmed that it was, in fact, addressed to me.
”The hell…?”
I opened it up and discovered that it was this statue of Batgirl.
I stared at it in confusion for a while – in fairness to me, keep in mind that I was still pretty groggy, as it was still hours and hours before sunrise – and then thought, “Did…did I order this?  Have I been sleepshopping?”
Then, somewhere in the back of my mind, a thought occurred to me.  “Isn’t it my birthday soon?  Is this a…present?”
Why, I wondered, as he was the most likely suspect, would Scott have my present shipped to me, rather than just giving it to me in person on my birthday?
The whole thing was rather baffling, and was made moreso by the fact that I couldn’t find any sort of packing slip indicating who had bought this for me.
Finally, after digging through all of the packing material, I found the slip and discovered that it was a gift from the (former) Boss Lady, and at that point grateful Jon was grateful…and especially glad that, since it’s the “New 52” version, that she selected a character whose costume redesign I actually like.
So…thanks, (former) Boss Lady!

Bah Humbug...Or Whatever. I Don't Care.

Given that…

I’m not a child, nor am I an adult who’s prone to things like “whimsy” or “a sense of childlike wonder” or anything like that*

There isn’t a religious component to my personality

While I have family – most of which is located more than a thousand miles away – and friends whom I care about, I don’t have a family of my own, or any sort of significant other with whom to share my life or special occasions

I hate crowds and am not a fan of humanity in general, mostly because humanity tends to form crowds and get in my way

…I don’t think it’s especially surprising that I’m not exactly the holly jolliest person in the world when it comes to Christmas, nor is this bit of understatement likely to be news to anyone who knows me.
Still, I’ve never been especially Scrooge or Grinch-like - though I’ve been called both – and while I don’t get any particular enjoyment out of Christmas, I normally don’t begrudge other people their happiness or holiday spirit – as long as it doesn’t get too obnoxious or intrude on my own life too much. Granted, invariably it does, if only in the obstacle course created by the hordes of consumers who are rushrushrushing – while paradoxically not seeming to move at all – to get in all of their holiday shopping as I’m trying to just get on with my normal life, but, in theory at least, I have no problem with people having Merry Christmases and Happy Chanukahs or Felicitous Festivuses or whatever they’re celebrating.
And I’m normally perfectly happy to dole out gifts to the aforementioned loved ones, because, hey, it’s Christmas and that’s what you do regardless, and beyond that, well, they’re my loved ones.
But this year…
I don’t know; somehow the massive crowds, the sappy, cloying music that’s suffocating in its ubiquity, the standard flare-ups from the noise machine about the “War on Christmas,” and just a vague, yet persistent, existential malaise have all added up to a sentiment that can best be summed up as “Fuck Christmas.”
Seriously, I don’t even feel inclined to give anyone anything. I mean, I will, but I don’t feel especially good about it. And that’s not me being miserly or lacking generosity, it’s just me not feeling it.
And it’s supposed to be better to give than to receive, and sure, normally I find that to be true – in some sense, at least – but receiving still ought to be good, right?
But while I don’t really want to give anything, I kind of don’t want to receive anything, either. I mean, what for? Most of the stuff I want I just get for myself (see the bit about not having a family/significant other), and if I want something that I can’t buy for myself...well, I can guarantee you that no one is going to buy it for me (nor would I expect anyone to do so).
So where does that leave me?
I told my mom – who is home now and recovering nicely, by the way – about my humbuggishness and she said that I should be happier than usual this year, given the fact that I didn’t lose my mom. That thought had already occurred to me, of course, and yes, my mom making it through all of that she went through does rank up in at least the top five best Christmas presents, but even so…
So what’s the point of all of this? I don’t know. I’m still going to give out presents, and I’ll still appreciate whatever presents I get.
It’s unlikely that I’ll be rushing down to Whoville to steal Christmas away from them – but if I did, I’d probably be small-hearted enough to say, “Screw you, little Cindy Lou Who, who’s no more than two” –and I probably won’t receive any ghostly visitors on December 24th.
So…well, so nothing, I suppose.
Amusingly, and perhaps appropriately enough in a pervese sort of way, the original point of the above was meant to be the introduction to a post that was going to serve as a semi-joking list of things I would like to get for Christmas this year.
…yeah.
Still, I’ve come this far, so I might as well go ahead with it, though it seems kind of counter-productive now. Of course, it wasn’t going to be terribly productive anyway, since ultimately it would have been directed towards some specific people who are the only ones I know who are likely to actually get me any of these things, especially since these are all things that I would like to add to my collection of comic book statues and figures, and they’re the ones who, in giving me my first statue, got my collection started…
In any case, here are some helpful links to statues I would like to add to my collection:

Dove (Dawn Granger)

Wonder Girl (Donna Troy)

The Huntress

Phantom Lady

Power Girl

Wonder Woman

Raven

The statues below are larger and more expensive, and seem less likely – understandably so – to be presented to me as gifts. Still, they’re worth mentioning:

Batgirl

Black Canary

Catwoman

Wonder Woman

Another Wonder Woman

Zatanna

And from the Marvel – and even more expensive and unlikely – side of things, there’s this:

Black Widow

For anyone who’s going to give me anything that isn’t a statue, I’d say that your best bet is some sort of store-specific gift card that will give me an excuse to buy one of those inexpensive things that I keep thinking about buying but can’t seem to bring myself to drop the twenty bucks or whatever to actually get.
Or, you know, just save your money and know that I won’t mind, because Bah Humbug and whatnot…

*I acknowledge that I have a certain level of arrested development.

Batman Night (Plus: Fishnets!)

So apparently I started a new tradition last night and henceforth Christmas Eve shall be known as Batman Night in the Heimdall household.
It started out with me deciding that I should get kind of into the spirit of things and watching the Christmas With The Joker episode of Batman: The Animated Series.
That episode has one of the greatest Batman lines ever. Robin, convinced that it’ll be a slow night in Gotham on Christmas Eve, makes a deal with Batman that if they go on patrol and nothing is happening, they’ll head back to Wayne Manor, enjoy a delicious Alfred-prepared meal, and watch It’s a Wonderful Life.
Batman says, “You know, I’ve never actually seen that. I could never get past the title.”
(One of my other favorite animated Batman line comes from an episode of Justice League Unlimited adapting Alan Moore’s excellent Superman story For The Man Who Has Everything. He and Wonder Woman are on their way to a private celebration of Superman’s birthday. Wonder Woman comments on how difficult it was to find an appropriate gift. Batman says, “Yes, it’s a difficult question: what do you get for the man who has everything?” There’s a pause, and then, horrified, Wonder Woman says, “Bruce…you didn’t get him a gift certificate, did you?” Batman responds in an offended tone, “Of course not!” Then, a little more weakly, adds “I’m giving him cash.”)
After that I decided to watch Holiday Knights, another holiday-themed episode from later in the series’ run. Watching that made me want to watch Batman: Mask of the Phantasm, the animated movie. That actually maintained the Christmas connection, as while the move itself doesn’t have a holiday theme, it did open in theaters on Christmas day back in 1993.
Watching that made me want to watch Batman Begins, which I did.
So it was an all-Batman night for me.
I don’t think I have anything else Chrismas-y to watch, unless you count the video of the photoshoot from which I pulled the reference image for my Christmas Eve picture, which, all things considered, probably isn’t the most appropriate Christmas video.
(I will just say that there are several other girls besides Eve in the photoshoot/video, so make of that what you will. I had been thinking about drawing a picture that featured Eve with her arms around two of the other similarly-clad girls and titling it Ho Ho Ho, but it would have been too much work and the other girls aren’t nearly as hot as Eve.)
Though all of the anticipation that accompanied the prospect of Christmas morning in my youth is long gone, I still traditionally have a difficult time getting to sleep on Christmas Eve, so I actually ended up being up until sometime after 2 with all of my Batman watching.
This morning I was off to Scott and Stacy’s for Christmas brunch, where I finally got to open a gift.
Scott had gotten me an Adam Hughes-designed Black Canary statuette (seen in the midst of unleashing her “Canary Cry”) from the same Women of the DC Universe series as the Power Girl statuette I got him when he got his new job. So now once I have my cubicle at my new job I’ll have some geek bling for it:


“I said, ‘MERRY CHRISTMAS AND STOP STARING AT MY BREASTS!’”


“No, I don’t know how my waist can possibly support my upper body.”


The Benes’ Eye View.


From this angle she looks like she’s preparing to catch Ollie’s “trick arrow,” if you know what I’m saying. (Hint: I’m talking about oral sex.) Coincidentally, it also looks a lot like the majority of the thumbnail previews of many of the video files on my hard drive.

He was torn between getting me the Black Canary statuette and getting me the Zatanna statuette, but the Canary won out due to the odd expression on Zatanna’s face, what with her tongue sticking out and all. Either way, fishnets, so I’m happy.
Of course, if they’d had it, he would have gotten me the Catwoman statuette, which would have been very cool.
Still, I have no complaints. I’ve always liked the Black Canary – except when she was presented as a strident, feminist cliché during the Giffen-Dematteis run of Justice League – and I really came to like her when she was handled by Gail Simone. Of course, Gail’s deft handling of the character worked against her, as she made Black Canary so popular that DC editorial took the character away from her to make her the current head of the Justice League and to give her a title of her own (shared with new hubby the Green Arrow).
I’m actually still waiting on a couple more presents, as my sister Kim got my address wrong, and presumably at some point today I’ll be getting one from Kathleen (and giving her one).
For some reason I’ve been getting flooded with MySpace friend requests today. I usually get a few a week, which I pretty much always ignore, as they are invariably just spammers, and I don’t actually spend any time on MySpace anyway, but they’ve been coming in non-stop.
Oh well, it gives me the illusion of popularity, which is important when you’re a jerk that no one likes. I think I’m going to make a T-shirt that says, “I’m the jerk that no one likes,” and include the text of the Emily Deschanel fan forum rant on it.
What can I say, apart from once having a commenter here call me a “whiny, pathetic buttwad,” I’ve never really been flamed – that I know of – on an Internet message board, so it feels kind of like an honor, albeit a dubious one.
Once I got home from brunch (I left just as they were preparing their marshmallow guns for battle and the grim specter of all-out marshmallow war was looming over everything. As a conscientious marshmallow objector, I could not in good conscience stay to watch the puffy, sugary mutually assured stickiness of their insane war. Marshmallow war is, after all, hell.) I called my sister and talked to her and her brood, then gave my mom a call. It’s a good thing I punked out and just gave money, as I was going to buy my mom a DVD player, but the grandkids got her one.
My plan to buy my nephew Jeremy a PSP for his graduation got shot down, too, as he got one today. His response: Get me a DS.
Because, you know, an X-Box, a Wii, a PS3, a PSP, and who knows what all else simply are not enough gaming systems.