Thumper Thinks Out Loud

ZipittyDoDah...

Ever struggled to figure something out, I mean really struggled, when you get to that point where you're positive you'll never 'get' it - only to suddenly have the lightbulb go off, the heavens open up and stream the Sunshine of Bingo!You-Got-It on you, and you finally understand?

That's a fricking awesome feeling.

I spend a good part of my weekend wanting to bang my head against the desk because I could not figure out how to paginate a novel-length (or any length, really) document in Adobe PageMaker without paginating the front matter (you know, the pages that have the title, legal mumbo-jumbo, dedication, and the title again...) I sat here with an incredibly thick PageMaker textbook, and I could find all kinds of neat tidbits on changing the way the numbers show up, how to manipulate master pages (I already knew that, thankeweveddymuch), how to have numbers not show up for the first dozen pages, but then the number picked up at 13... I needed it to start at 1.

The screams you probably heard riding on the wind every half hour or so yesterday - that was me.

Then it hit me. I have to distill the PageMaker document to Adobe Acrobat at some point to create a PDF File. So maybe the answer was there. Use Acrobat. I dug out my Acrobat For Dummies book (no kidding, I figure I know nothing, so Dummies is the place to start) and started to read. But there was no way to change the pagination after the document was distilled to PDF format.

Then something else hit me. Combine two separate documents. Create not only a PDF of the manuscript, but of the front matter as well. Yeehaw. File merging! w00t!

But, I couldn't find it in my Dummies Book. I was heartbroken.

You know what? Most software comes with a little button that either says help or just ? I didn't occur to me until late, late at night that perhaps I could find the answer there.

I clicked, and looked for Merge. Nothing.

Damn.

All I wanted to do was combine two... eh? What's that? Look under Combine!

Well, I'll be... There it was. In black and white. Combining PDF files. And it was easy! Man, I got so excited I had to run upstairs and tell the Spouse Thingy, who was lounging in the bathtub, reading a Tom Clancy book. He was thrilled for me, I could tell.

At least, he didn't laugh until I was out of ear shot.
Good Spouse Thingy.
Yay me.