Thesis Go-Ahead

I had a talk with Jeff and we decided that I should write up my thesis before working on the "data" paper. That means I get to go ahead with everything a bit early. This weekend was spent "stapling" my previous papers into one giant thesis document. The UH thesis format is basically a waste of paper. I took what was about 50 pages worth of journal articles I've written so far, and even after deleting repetitious sections and condensing figures, it's about 180 pages! Good god. They require double-spacing and huge margins. I've also been told by a few grads now that the ProQuest company that UH uses publish these things looks like a bad photocopy. I'd be better off printing it at IfA on a decent laser-printer and just stapling the thing together. Half-way to the third world..... At any rate, I've got one more run in Dec to go and then I'm done with this observing crap and I finish writing the data section. I've learned a lot about the different LaTex formatting packages lately, so I'm getting good at formating my figures and things like that. It is kind of crazy to think that this will be a compilation of over 100 nights spent on a mountain top.