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Marilyn D. Glazer, GRI, CRS, CRB, M.S.Ed.

ILLINOIS ASSOCIATION OF REALTORS REPORTS NEW AUDIT POLICY OF IDFPR

Effective this month (January 2006), the Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulation (IDFPR) Bureau of Real Estate will expand the Real Estate Compliance Audit program to include a mail response audit. The mail audit is an expansion of the field compliance audits that have been conducted onsite at brokers' offices for the past few years.

Any broker receiving the request should complete the Broker Verification Report, attach any requested materials, sign the report form and return it to IDFPR within 10 days of receipt of compliance audit correspondence. After review by IDFPR, you may receive a request for additional information and/or be scheduled for an onsite compliance audit.

Samples of the mail audit and request for additional information are available for your review from the IAR Web site:

· Broker Verification Report (pdf)

· Request for Additional Information (pdf)

IAR Supports License Law Changes
Also on Wednesday, January 18 th the IAR initiated legislation, which makes various changes to Real Estate License Act was introduced as House Bill 4812 . This bill was developed after several months of review and study of the Act by two IAR Task Forces. House Bill 4812, sponsored by House Registration and Regulation Committee Chairman Representative Angelo “Skip” Saviano, contains clarifying and substantive amendments to the Act, including the following provisions:

  •   Clarifies some of the language in the definition of “broker”;
  •    Clarifies the exemption language for MLSs and advertising media;
  •   Provides that a person must be licensed and engaged in licensed real estate brokerage activities in the applicant's state of domicile for at least two of the 3 years preceding application in order to obtain a broker's license;
  •   Provides that the licenses of sponsored licensees shall be issued to the sponsoring broker at the sponsoring broker's address of record;
  •   Provides that renewals for each licensee must be mailed at least 60 days prior to expiration date of the licensee's license, and that the renewal shall be sent to the licensee's sponsoring broker's address of record;
  •   Provides that a licensee does not have to take CE if they are issued a licensee less than 90 days (now one year) prior to the expiration date of the license;
  • Provides that CE credit hours may not be earned for pre-license courses;
  • Provides that CE exams shall be “closed book” exams;
  • Adds a definition of “proctor”; provides that all pre-license and CE course exams must be proctored; provides that schools are responsible for the conduct of the proctor; and provides for duties and responsibilities of proctors to be established by rule;
  • Requires CE instructors to attend and successfully complete a one-day instructor development workshop, and provides that all CE instructors must teach at least one course within the period of licensure;
  • Establishes a minimum number of prosecutors that must be employed by the Department to investigators that must be employed by the Department to investigate alleged violations of the act and alleged unlicensed practice.

Click on the here for the full bill (additions are underlined - deletions are crossed out).

Chris Puszynski

How to Fit Over 350 Floppies on Your Keychain
by: Luis A. Arauz, GeekWork

I have had lots of people asking me why they can't retrieve their file stored on a floppy disk. You might still be using floppy disks to store your files, so I wanted to talk about the problems with floppies why they break down and offer a great alternative. Hopefully by reading this you will save yourself the headache of losing a precious document or file, just before trying to hand it in or print it.

Floppy disks may be cheap and convenient to carry around, but they're not durable, eventually they deteriorate and often suddenly fail without warning. This is because the part of a floppy disk holding the data is a flimsy plastic circle coated with a magnetic material. Your data is written on this magnetic material which eventually begins to deteriorate and disappear along with your data.

Floppy disks are vulnerable to many things, among them magnetic fields, improper housing/storage, extreme heat, extreme cold, extreme humidity, water damage, microscopic particles (dust, smoke etc), hair, bending, fingerprints, and physical damage from other objects. Any one of these things can interact with the magnetic material ripping it away from the disk. When it does you'll start seeing disk errors.

When you see a disk error, stop using the disk. If you want any chance of recovering the data, stop trying to open damaged files. The more you try using a damaged disk or file, the less likely you will be able to successful recover your files. Floppies are best used for temporary transport. If you must, save your work on a hard drive and then save it to the floppy so you have two copies available.

OK, now that I've got you staring at your floppies worried about the data on them, let me give you an alternative removable media for storing and transporting your data. There are alternatives such as ZIP disks, recordable CDs, and external hard drives to transport your data, but they all have their own issues.

The best option I've found for transporting/storing your data quickly and conveniently, is the USB solid state memory drive, also know as thumb drives, jump drives, or USB key. These jump drives are completely solid state storage drives, meaning there are no moving parts so there is less chances for something to break. These devices are small enough to easily fit on your keychain or in your pocket and can much more safely store your data.

In order to use the jump drive you just plug it in to any available USB port on a computer. (As long as you are working with a computer less than 7 or 8 years old you will find a USB port on it.) A few seconds after plugging it, your operating system should recognize it and open up a window showing the contents of the drive. If you are using Windows ME or earlier you may need to install driver software in order to use the jump drive.

Now you can use the jump drive just as any other hard drive on your computer. Click on an icon to open up that program or document. If you want to save a file on the jump drive you can click and drag or save directly on to the jump drive from your computer.

So how much do these things cost and how much more can you store on them verses a floppy?

Well a 3.5 inch floppy disk holds 1.44MB of data. I own a 512MB jump drive. So mathematically speaking I can store 355.5 floppies on my one jump drive. Which would you rather have?

OK, you can store a lot more, but then these things got to cost hundreds of dollars right? Not really, you can pick up a jump drive like I have for $44.00 even cheaper if you shop around.

So when you are ready to buy one here are some things to look for

Storage: If you're buying at a local store you will generally find USB drives in sizes of 128MB, 256MB, 512MB and 1GB. The prices have come down considerably on these, but if they are still out of your price range you can find 16MB jump drives for as low as $12 that will hold approximately 11 floppies. So these jump drives are worth the cost.

Speed: There are two types of USB devices USB 1.1 and USB 2.0. You want USB 2.0 because it transfers data much faster, this will be very useful especially when transferring larger files.

Ruggedness: Where will you be keeping the drive, when you aren't using it? On your keys? on a lanyard? In your pocket? Is the cap on it flimsy? Are there moving parts on it that can break easily? Make sure that the one you choose will fit your lifestyle.

Size: Not the size of storage but the actual size of the device. USB ports on computers are designed to fit the standard USB cable. However jump drives come in many different shapes and sizes, so make sure you are getting one that will fit the most computers possible. Nothing worse than trying to give someone an important file only to find that your jump drive doesn't fit the poorly placed port on their computer.

Extras: Does the jump drive include encryption tools, synchronization tools, and active drive options? Are there free open source alternative software that can do the same job but better? Do you actually need any of those programs? You may be paying extra for options you won't be using if you are just looking for a simple storage device.

I hope you understand why jump drives are a great alternative to floppies. When you do get one let me know at geekword@nbgc.org and tell me about it, how you are using it and how much you like it. I might even give you some great tools to put on it.

Luis was our speaker in January and has allowed me to publish his articles in our newsletter. Luis can be reached at 773-251-3742. He charges by the hour and makes house calls.

I look forward to seeing all of you this month!

Chris Puszynski
Chris@Concare.com.