I. Detest. LaTeX.

Really, truly, profoundly, and very very deeply, I do. The write-ups f0r the LISA V conference proceedings are due at the end of the week and, because we're going with ASP as the publisher, it all had to be done in LaTeX. (No, I'm not going to format the silly thing.)

I wrote my paper - a poster write-up, actually - in about 45 minutes, including generating new images. It then took 12 HOURS (yes, that would be spread over two days) to get a successful compile (yes, you have to compile it) of the ginormously-huge 3.5-page document, and this after downloading and installing four different software packages on my machine. And contacting the ASP's LaTeX tech support person (thanks again, Terry!). And ranting a lot. Why, oh why, are they still requiring LaTeX? Can't you just accept a PDF (which they want anyway, did I mention that? The .tex file, the figures in .eps format, and a final PDF), which will let the folks with the deep mathematics needs use LaTeX and those of us with zero equations, two pages of plain text and a few figures to use anything else? I am deeply frustrated and seriously annoyed... I just blew a day and a half on this, time that could have been spent doing many, many other things. Thankfully my boss was understanding, and even encouraging - I hit the point at the end of the day yesterday where I was just going to tell the editors to pull my name, I wasn't submitting a poster writeup, and he encouraged me to stay the course. So thanks, Rob.

I wish the conference editors and ASP joy and happiness with this. If they send it back to me with any kind of tweaks or anything like that, I'll return to the "Heck with it, publish it without me" model. I ain't touching that blasted file again. Grr! Not gonna do it!

Now 94° and down to 12%Rh. Aaahhh..... with an added bonus of NOT HAVING TO LOOK AT THAT FILE AGAIN. The week is looking up!