projection questions

[Jeff Portwine]

I've looked through a lot of information, the links you all sent, and other
places on the web, but I simply can't figure out how to get the settings
right for projecting my map.

I set every layer to "proj=latlong" with no other settings (I'm pretty sure
that all the shapefiles I have are lat/long NAD83) and then in the map
section I added a projection block.   I tried a lot of different
settings.... most of them just give me a blank map.     I read on one of
those web pages that Massachusettes has a standard projection of Lamberts
Conformal Conic with 2 latitudes of 41.6 and 42.7.     So, I converted my
extents over with the cs2cs utility and set my output projection to:

PROJECTION
   "proj=lcc"
   "lat_1=41.6"
   "lat_2=42.7"
END

This actually came out better than anything else I've tried... the extents
looked like they were about as correct as I could get them but the entire
map was twisted clockwise about 45 degrees....

The rest of my attempts revolved around the Transvers Mercator projection.
I tried using UTM:

PROJECTION
    "proj=utm"
    "ellps=GRS80"
    "zone=19"
    "north"
    "no_defs"
END

These settings were from an example in the mapserver mapfile documentation,
I used zone 19, though the area i'm mapping is right on the line between
zone 18 and zone 19.

PROJECTION
   "proj=tmerc"
   "k=0.9996"
   "x_0=0"
   "y_0=500000"
   "lat_0=42.75"
   "lon_0=73.8"
END

I got these settings from
http://www.remotesensing.org/geotiff/proj_list/transverse_mercator.html and
used the longitude and latitude of Albany as my lat/long of origin since
that was roughly in the middle of my map.

Of the multitude of attempts I made to get the right settings, these two
made the most sense to me based on what I'd read... but they didn't work at
all, or perhaps I just screwed up when I was getting my extents.     This
stuff is really really confusing, adn I'm beginning to wonder if I should
just use the lat/long map even though it's not really right and looks
funny.... but any pointers on how to get the right settings is really
appreciated.

-Jeff