hillshade from seamless data

It's ArcGIS time. First, let's reflect on how Arc is the anti-google in terms of user-friendliness. It's a constant source of exasperation and I am here to document my exasperation and hopefully avoid some in the future.

Starting from the beginning, here's an example if you want to download high resolution topographic data (1/9 arc second, where 1 arc second at the equator is ~31 m)  from the USGS Seamless Server, reproject it to UTM, and then make a hillshade.

1. Download stuff from seamless - http://seamless.usgs.gov/

Click on the "view and download united states data" image [link].

a. On the right hand side of the screen:
In the Display Tab, under Layer Extents, specify NED 1/9 arc second (National Elevation Dataset). This shows where that data exists.
In the Download Tab, click 1/9 arc sec, assuming that's what you want (default is 1 arc).

b. On the left hand side of the screen, under the Downloads section, define your area:
The way I like to do it is with the 2nd button, Define download area by coordinates, because then you know exactly what the boundaries are, if you need to mosaic it later or whatever. I like to get my lat/lon coordinates from Google Earth.

c. Fill in the window that pops up and then click "Add Area", another window will pop up telling you your request is in a queue and then the file will be downloaded to your default location. If the area you specify is large (I don't know how large), it will be divided into separate files.

Note: Sometimes one or more of the files will stall during downloading, and since the naming convention is incomprehensible (an 8-digit string, seemingly random), it is hard to figure out what part you are missing. Oh well.

2. Unzip all files in the directory you want

3. If there are multiple files, make a mosaic from the separate files

In ArcMap,

a. Make sure the Spatial Analyst extension turned on (Tools -> Extensions -> Spatial Analyst)
(!$#%!#$)%!#$%& that this is not on by default)

b. Click on red tool box (or bring up the toolbar with View ->Toolbars ->Tools)

Click Data management Tools -> Raster -> Raster Dataset -> Mosaic to New Raster

if you don't specify an extension, it will default to GRID

4. Convert from lat/lon to UTM

In Data Management Tools,
Projections and Transformations -> Raster -> Project Raster -> UTM

Input: make sure to erase the default output name .img extension, and make under 13 characters (bug in GIS)

usual convention for new projection: name_prj

Select -> Projected Coordinate Systems

NAD 1983 Zone 10N (for local CA stuff)

Scroll down to Resampling technique-> change to CUBIC (the default method tends to create striping)

5. Restart ARC because it is possible that it thinks it is still in lat/lon

6. Make hillshade

In tools:
Spatial Analyst Tools -> Surface -> Hillshade

You should have a nice hillshade of the topo data.