1. nicely formatted approval table with irregular cells and background
    2. 
\usepackage{tabu}

\begin{table}[h]
\fontsize{9pt}{10pt}\selectfont
\begin{tabu}{|l|l|l|l|}
\hline
\rowcolor[HTML]{EFEFEF}
\rowfont{\color{white}}
\multicolumn{4}{|c|}{\cellcolor[HTML]{00000}\textbf{APPROVAL}}   \\ \hline
\rowcolor[HTML]{EFEFEF} 
\textbf{Title} & \multicolumn{3}{|c|}{How to survive a Zombie Apocalypse}  \\ \hline
\textbf{Issue} & 0 & \textbf{Revision} & 4 \\ \hline
\textbf{Author} & Rambo, McGyver & \textbf{Date} & 2015-03-12 \\ \hline
\textbf{Approved by} & Chuck Norris & \textbf{Date} & 2015-03-12 \\ \hline
\end{tabu}
\end{table}
\endgroup
  2. have the Bibliography section as a numbered chapter and (optionally) change its name too
    3. \usepackage[nottoc,numbib]{tocbibind}
\renewcommand\bibname{Applicable and Reference Documents}
  3. compiling and installing packages
    4. Sometimes you have to run tex on the *.dtx file, othertimes you have to run it on the *.ins file. It is not, at the moment, clear to me how to decide other by trying.
  4. how to install the latest geometry package in Ubuntu
    5. This is necessary to effectively use mixed A3 and A4 files in a document. The below procedure can obviously be followed for other packages as well. Sources: basically SO answer and, secondarily, this blog post (of which I didn't use the suggested location or the sudo texhash command).
    1. Download the package from CTAN
    2. Copy the package in a temporary location, extract it, and compile the *.dtx file: 
      tex geometry.dtx
      (the above step should produce geometry.sty)
    3. Now the question becomes where to put the resultant *.sty file and how to let Tex find out about it. For that, I followed the approach of the first source referenced above
      4. cd /usr/local/share/texmf/
sudo mkdir -p tex/latex/footmisc
cd tex/latex/footmisc
sudo cp ~/path/to/the/sty/file/geometry.sty .
cd /usr/local/share/texmf/ ; sudo mktexlsr
    4. At this point, the ls-R file should contain the geometry package:
      5. cat ls-R
      A slightly differrent approach would have been to copy the *.dtx (or even the entire package) in the /usr/local/share/texmf directory tree and compile it there (and not in a temporary location like the steps above do)