for the unsung heroes of Endnote tech support

a moment to express my thanks for the technical support available for Endnote software. Wow.

After a couple weeks of almost total hiatus from actual work, I sat down to open up my dissertation files and lo and behold, Word and Endnote were no longer talking to each other. At least not very satisfactorily. Communication breakdown. I'm not completely dumb with computer programs, but neither am I a wiz, and my knowledge is limited to what it is strictly necessary. So unexpected Endnote issues put me in a panic. Those files are important--Endnote enshrines the totality of my dissertation research to date. I don't want to monkey around with that. But the whole point of Endnote is to CWYW. Footnoting while writing text means a break in the composition process, and Endnote not only minimizes that to manageable blips in the thought process, it relieves me of having to parenthetically document inside the text and go back later and convert to footnotes AND keep all the bibliographic info updated and ordered somewhere accessible. It's an amazing thing and after two years I am completely dependent on it. If I had to create footnotes and bibliography on my own without this tool, it would add a whole 'nother year to the dissertation process. Okay, maybe that's an exaggeration, but still. It saves me a hell of a lot of work.

When it works.

Which it didn't, but now it does again.

I don't know why things got jacked up, but now that they're okay (with the help of a friendly tech support guy who did not make fun of me and told me which things to go click and unclick), it's all good, and at 2:32 p.m., I can finally try to get some actual writing done today.

If I knew the guy's name, I would totally include him in my acknowledgments.