RALly ho!

The SLD looks to be firing out Receipt Acknowledgement Letters (RALs) quickly this year. So far it looks like about a 4-day turnaround from certification of the 471 to issuing of the RAL. I haven't checked, but I seem to remember a slower turnaround in the past.

This year brings us a new, improved RAL. So of course I'm going to give my thoughts on it. In general, they're a real improvement.

The Good:

• Pink envelopes
• Clearer prose
• Plenty of space to scrawl in corrections

The Bad:

• Man, that's a lot of paper; each FRN gets its own page, which means over 100,000 sheets of paper. I think 2 FRNs could fit on a page, which would save 100 reams of paper.
• No online RAL.

The Ugly:

• Still with the monospaced fonts! The letters should be in Times, not Courier, and should use larger font sizes for emphasis.
• The envelopes were a little closer to salmon than the medium pink pages of the letter, so I couldn't get the letters out of the envelope fast enough. (I guess I learned more than I thought from watching "The Devil Wears Prada" last week.)