Clint Laskowski, CISSP, CISM

A few days back someone spilled a small amount of ice tea onto one of our Dell L100 keyboards. This was a relatively inexpensive keyboard that came with a Dell Inspiron home computer.

The Dell L100 Keyboard

After drying the keyboard as much as possible, I let it sit for a day or two to dry even more. But, when I tried it on a working system, every key worked except the “Space” bar. Being an occasional hardware hacker, I wanted to see if I could fix it. My first step was to take the keyboard apart to see if there were any obvious problems. Here’s the inside:

Bottom half of keyboard with top cover and keys removed.

Considering how simple the switches were, I figured it must be something more complex, like the small circuit board:

Internal "logic" board.

In order to figure out which pins on the connector represented the Space bar, I had to follow the conductive traces around the clear plastic “circuit boards” inside the keyboard. Thats when I found it … a small area where the ice tea must have eaten away at the conductive traces making the Space bar inoperative:

The conductive traces (to the right of my thumb) had been eaten away by ice tea spilled on the keyboard!

To confirm the traces were broken, I used a multimeter. I tried to repair the conductive traces using a pen with “metallic” ink, but they were too small and pen was too wide.

At this point it was clear the keyboard could not be repaired.

Having served its final purpose – reminding me that I still have useful hardware troubleshooting skills – I tossed the keyboard the trash and turned my attention to buying a new one online.

Welcome to WordPress. This is your first post. Edit or delete it, then start blogging!

from Tkinter import *
root = Tk()
root.title('Listbox')
list = Listbox(root, width=15)
list.pack()
for item in range(10):
    list.insert(END, item)
root.mainloop()

Originally posted on April 19, 2010: Today, Jan and I met Jeff Galloway, the famous Olympic marathon runner. Below is a picture. Jeff is in the center.

Originally posted on March 15, 2010: On Saturday, March 13, 2010, we spent a few hours at the FIRST Wisconsin Regional Robot Competition. The event was held at the US Cellular Arena in Milwaukee. For those not familiar, FIRST is a robotics competition. Here are a few pictures of the event …

Statement: Each Information Asset must have a documented Asset Owner.

• Does your organization document an asset owner for each information asset, or only significant assets?
• Is the asset owner the person who is ultimately responsible for making decisions about that asset?
• How do you document your asset owners (i.e., in a spreadsheet, database, or some other register)?

Please add your answers as a comment below.

We use them all the time, but what exactly is an “Information System”? Let’s break down the words…

A System is “a collection of components organized to meet an objective.” What kind of components? What ever components are needed to meet the objective! Traditionally, that means “people, processes, and technologies.” And, what is the objective of an Information System?

The objective of an Information System is “to transfer, process, store, and manage” information. But, what is information?

Information is data that is relevant and has meaning in a context. So, the numbers 7155551212 are not information; they are data. But, if I ask you to call Linda at 715-555-1212, those numbers become information in the context of making a telephone call.

Now, our definition of an Information System is more complete. Let’s put it all together: An Information System is a collection of people, processes, and technologies organized to transfer, process, store and manage data that is relevant and has meaning in a context.

It’s quite interesting because data are only representations of aspects of the real-world and of our ideas. There really is no physical thing that is the letter “A”. “A” is just a symbol to represent something in the real-world (perhaps the sound we make when we say the letter “A”), or an idea (what ever that “A” sound represented long ago).

An Information System (such as a computer) is just a collection of components organized to transfer, process, and store relevant and meaningful representations of the real-world and our ideas. Simple enough. But, take that collection of components and make them operate very, very fast, and now you have something that can really transform our world and our ideas.

This article was originally published as on July 24, 2008, as a Google Knol. See http://knol.google.com/k/clint-laskowski/what-is-an-information-system/3v4qe269ituzc/2.

OMG! A modern single pane outliner for Windows! I’ve been looking for one so long that I seriously considered coding one myself. I don’t know how good it is yet, but the screenshots look fantastic.

UV Outliner is by Fedir Nepyivoda (Kiev, Ukraine).

In 1979, at age 16, I saved money from my paper route and purchased my first computer – an Ohio Scientific (OSI) C2-4P – from Allied Electronics in West Allis, Wisconsin. It had a 6502 microprocessor and 4K(!) of RAM. I used a cassette tape recorder for mass storage (transfer rate was 300 baud), and an RF converter and a television set as my video monitor. This provided a stunning monochrome 80×40 character display!

Within a few months I grew tired of the 15+ minutes it took to load BASIC into RAM from cassette and decided to learn assembly language. This was better since there was a “monitor” program in ROM and therefore always available immediately.

Today, I flip-flop back and forth between thinking, “Those were the days!” and “How could 30 years have gone by so quickly?”

What the heck is going on?

• White Whales Exhaling Bubble Rings to Impress the Audience
• Monkey Boxing
• Orangutan attempts to hunt fish with spear

I was just talking to my neighbor and friend, Phil Gerbyshak – The Make It Great Guy, about using social media when looking for new work. I have friend who has been looking for new work in IT for quite a few months. Here are some ideas Phil suggested:

1. Make sure your profile on LinkedIn is complete and up-to-date.

2. Make sure you have plenty of positive recommendations. If you feel you did a good job, you should not hesitate to ask for a LinkedIn recommendation for every project and every manager you’ve worked for.

3. Make time during your job search to join and participate in discussions in LinkedIn Groups, and to answer questions posted to LinkedIn Answers. The goal is to present yourself as an expert in your domain(s).

4. Use TweetDeck to follow JobAngels (@jobangels). Filter by tags if needed (i.e., #milwaukee if you are in Milwaukee, WI).

5. Join one of the professional organizations in your field and help them get up-and-running on Twitter, LinkedIn, etc.

Phil’s last suggestion was his best:

6. Read Phil Gerbyshak‘s blog. He covers real-world use of social media – including LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter – every day.

How about it? What are your tips for using social media when looking for a new job in IT in 2009?