After close to fifty members enjoyed a wonderful dinner, President Steve Velasquez opened the March 24 meeting at the Manhasset-Lakeville Fire Department in Great Neck.
added note: (4/1/05): left out of the original posting!
Special thanks to Fire News for the theater tickets given away as raffle prize.
Steve led with the pledge to the flag and told the members that 13 of them had taken 27 tests the night before at SUNY – Farmingdale. Chris Lo Preto, our own Sayville mechanic and former LIEVT president, who moonlights as a professor of automotive engineering, had conducted a class to prepare them for the test. He plans to do the same for the next test which will be held on a Saturday morning in June. Chris had arranged for this past test to be held on a weekday evening which earned praise from member Phil Santoli. LIEVT sponsored the test and paid for the proctor. He mentioned the questionnaire that Kit handed each attendee. He stressed the importance of the website, http://www.lievt.org and urged the members to become familiar with it. More folks seem to be using it. He pointed out the literature that was available for the members.
Several months ago I mentioned to Kit that the EVT associations nationwide might collectively benefit from the application of a technology called RSS. In brief, RSS allows administrators of websites to include links to relevant content on other websites and have them updated automatically. In a first example of the power of this technology, please take notice of the links in the block at lower right. The links actually point to the latest posts on the new EVTA forums (not located here on this website). This allows us to scan the latest stories on that other website, and go there to read them if they seem interesting. Comments on this new addition to the site are welcome here in our own forums. Webmasters of other associations are welcome to include the latest posts of our forums to their own sites via this RSS feed.
[note 2007: these links are no longer valid] 
