Concrete Skyline: April 2003 Archives

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April 26, 2003

Notice of Parking Violation Hearing Decision

So last year on October 5th I received a 50$ parking ticket on my motorcycle in San Francisco. I’ve been fighting this ticket for over six months now, and after losing and failing over and over, in my last appeal I finally won. Here is the text of the letter I got from the Department Of Parking And Traffic.

Re: Protest of parking citation XXXXXXXXX

Dear Mr. Wood:

A hearing was initiated in response to your protest.

After reviewing all the evidence, I find the citation invalid.

A field survey has confirmed your claim that the vehicle was not in violation and was cited outside the tow away zone.

You can expect a refund in the mail in 1 to 2 weeks. No further action is required.

Respectfully,

S.ABBOTT
Hearing Officer

Posted by gene_wood at 07:27 PM | Comments (4)

April 22, 2003

How to add "Email This Entry" functionality into your Movable Type weblog

This is a tutorial on how to enable the built in "Email This Entry" functionality of Movable Type for your weblog. This will create a link after each story on your main page (index.html) that says "Email This Entry" and will create a popup window asking for your email address, the email address of the person that you want to send the story to, and an optional message to send with it.

This tutorial depends on your website being able to handle php files.

Browse to the Movable Type user interface (mt.cgi) and go to Templates
Under Index Templates click Create new index template
For Template Name give something like "Email This Entry"
For Output File enter "send-email.php"
In the Template Body copy and paste the text in this text file
Click Save
Click Rebuild
Now that you've created the popup window containing the form calling mt-send-entry.cgi, let's move on to adding the link to your main index. Go back to the main Templates page.
Go to Main Index (index.html)
In the Template Body field add this first block of text inside the <head> section. You will want to place this immediately after the line which looks like this.
```
<script language="javascript" type="text/javascript">
```
The text to add is the following 5 lines
```
function OpenEmail (c) {
window.open(c, 
   'email', 
   'width=480,height=480,scrollbars=yes,status=yes');
   }
```
The second block of text to add to the Template Body will go immediately after the line which looks like this :
```
</MTEntryIfAllowPings>
```
Notice the slash before the MTEntryIfAllowPings. This is a closing tag that you're looking for, not an opening tag. The text to add is the following 2 lines
```
| <a href="<$MTBlogURL$>send-email.php?entry_id=<$MTEntryID$>" 
onclick="OpenEmail(this.href); return false">Email This Entry</a>
```
Once these two modifications have been completed, Save the Main Index template, and Rebuild it.
Once both templates have been rebuilt (the new "Email This Entry" template and the "Main Index" template), browse to your weblog by clicking View Site
Check to see that the "Email This Entry" link shows up after each entry near the "Comments" link.
Click the link and verify that it creates a popup window with the Email form in it.
Fill out the email form and email yourself. Make sure that the email arrives in your mailbox.
You're all done.

Posted by gene_wood at 10:19 PM | Comments (16)

Earth Day, 25 years ago

My Dad writes :

Hey, Son…

I just went to Google and saw that it’s Earth Day. So you should know exactly where you were 25 years ago today.

I went to work for Dupont in March 1978. After my training in Newton Connecticut was complete, Pam flew to Kennedy Airport in New York, where I met her and we rented a car. We then took a week driving vacation from NYC as far as Maryland. Then we returned to NY and flew home to begin our home-owning, child-raising life.

Earth Day 1978 Pam and I were walking across the Mall (between the Washington Monument and the Lincoln Memorial) in DC. There was an Earth Day celebration in progress. Lots of ‘youth’ were cavorting on the grass. Somebody let fly with a Frisbee and smacked Pam right in the belly (and therefore, you, right in the head).

Draw what conclusions about your own life you wish from this prenatal experience.

And Happy Earth Day!

Dad

Posted by gene_wood at 05:17 PM | Comments (2)