Lessons learned

1. Do not attach an RJ45 plug to a cable right above a laptop's keyboard.
2. When ignoring the above, make sure you do the cutting somewhere else, so that the little pieces of throwaway cable do not fall on top of your keyboard.
3. When ignoring the above, turn the laptop upside-down, rather than trying to push down one of the buttons in an attempt to more easily reach the little cable thing.
4. Cable bits in a keyboard can really mess it up.
5. Laptop keyboards are even worse to reassemble after removing the keys than are desktop keyboards.
6. Attaching a space bar to a laptop keyboard is a horrible puzzle, which is likely to take you about an hour to figure out if you've never done so before. Once you have, though, and understand the procedure, it takes only a few minutes to do properly.
7. Mail sucks. No, that's not related to any of the above, but it still does.

At least I didn't break any parts this time. Progress.