They Will Know Us By Our T-Shirts, a blog about working in a Christian bookstore. This looks pretty interesting. I generally try to avoid places like this, so it must be tough to work there.

(via Linfilter)

Fat Fingers - Find typos and misspellings on eBay. Because I want you to save money, here's a link from across the pond. If an eBay seller has a typo in the title of their item, it won't show up in a normal search. That means fewer people will bid on it, and the price will be lower. FatFingers is a tool for searching Ebay for misspelled items. You type in what you're looking for, and it will search eBay for words that are close, but not quite spelled right. Happy shopinnf!

Today was my first day at the bank. I din't know what I would be doing, but they gave me some time to work with the Cisco PIX firewall. I'm supposed to learn how to generate security reports for when the Federal Reserve examiners come to the bank. I'm slowly getting the hang of it. We manage the firewall and routers with ssh using the PuTTY ssh client. I have a little bit of experience with that, thanks to Brendan and Brendon. So I guess I'm having fun with my new job. Learning the teller line will be one of my next projects.

Here are a series of unrelated thoughts from an undecided voter . . .

I don't want to be a one-issue voter.

I'm not sure how much effect a president can have on the economy, for good or for bad.

I'm not as interested in which guy is running a better campaign, as I am in who will do a better job as president.

I'm not that impressed (any more) when politicians say that they should talk about the issues instead of all the mudslinging and distractions. If someone actually acted on that, it would be different.

Education is socialized, social security is socialized, health care is mostly privatized. Why? Bush seems to want to take steps toward privatizing education and social security. Kerry leans toward socializing medicine. Which of them is right? Which way of doing things is working better now?

Bush was wrong about Iraq. He said that they had WMD, nuclear material and ties to al Qaeda. Those were his reasons for invading and they turned out to be all wrong. I don't think that he was lying, but he made the wrong call there, and it was a pretty serious mistake. That might be enough reason to fire him.

Iraq is probably better off without Saddam. But is that enough to make up for the fact that Bush was wrong about his reasons for going in? I'm not sure that it does. Once his first reasons didn't pan out he started talking about liberating Iraq and deposing Saddam. This is a subtle but important shift. Nukes, WMD and al Qaeda connections would have made Iraq a threat to the US.

Daily Show viewers are more informed No surprise to me since the show is one of my main sources of news. (via Linkfilter)

This story says that one of Kerry's big campaign promises is to end the ban on stem cell research, but there is no ban. (via Linkfilter)

You may have seen some error messages if you tried to get to this site in the last few days. Brendoman explains what happened here. Everything is fine now.

Since my last day at ACC was 9-19, and my first day at the bank is 9-27, I've got the week off. It's already half gone, but I have a lot planned for the rest of the week. I'm working with my grandpa on building a floor-to-ceiling bookcase in our living room. This is what Sara wants for Christmas. I struck a deal with the local newspaper editor to design a website for him. I registered the space and domain name this morning, so I'll be working on that some this week. I'm supposed to be writing one more article for the ACC newsletter that Sara publishes each month. When it's finished I'll post an advance copy here for my valued Blog Cabin readers.

After about 20 hours of being unemployed, I have a new job. I went in this morning for a third interview at the Adrian Bank. They offered me a job and I accepted. I'll learn several things, like the teller job, and some things having to do with compliance, but my main work will be with computers and internet banking. I'll be involved in getting internet banking started and in training bank employees and customers on how to use it. They're ordering a laptop and a projector for me so I can make presentations. The bank has three branches, and none of them are more than 10 miles from my house, so I'll be working close to home. Everyone I've talked to is really nice and I'm looking forward to starting on Monday (9-27). Thanks to everyone who has prayed for me to find a job.

I ran across a cool Google feature. Type "define:" followed by a word in the search window and Google will produce a list of definitions for that word. It usually brings up a pretty useful list, and works for several more specialized terms that aren't listed by sites like Dictionary.com.

Today was my last day at my old job. I taught my last Sunday school class and introduced the new teachers to the kids. I read the announcements for the last time. My office is cleaned out, my computer has a fresh install of Windows XP. I'm done. I feel relieved and maybe a little bit sad, but not much. It's going to be better. The kids will have some leaders who are excited about working with them. I won't be working at night any more. Church will be more fun for me now. Tomorrow I go in for a third interview. I really hope they offer me a job.

Last night we went with my parents to watch my sister play volleyball. After the game we stopped at McDonald's for a tasty and nutritious meal. I ordered some chicken strips (which are all the rage because they contain actual meat). I asked for one of each of their new dipping sauces and and two packages of sweet and sour and was told that they can only give me two sauce packs with my 5-piece chicken strip meal. I managed to get 3 sauces, since Emma's happy meal was allotted one pack. Feeling only somewhat defeated, I was gathering up my dipping sauces to head over to our table when the cashier stopped me. My dad had paid with a credit card and they didn't ask him to sign a receipt before he left the counter. She said, and this is a direct quote, "Someone needs to sign this; it doesn't matter who does it." She handed me a pencil (yes, a pencil) and let me sign the receipt. I was so upset about my limited selection of sauces that I didn't recognize the extreme irony of all this until Sara pointed it out to me.