I finished my first week at the bank today. We do work from 8-12 on Saturdays. I trained as a teller from Tuesday to Friday and got fairly comfortable with it. It's more complicated than I realized, and I'll be covering for a teller over their lunch break for a while. This morning I finally got down to some computer business. I set up a headless Win98 rig to catch my syslogs for making security reports. I'll use TightVNC to log in, control the computer and make reports. I set KiwiSyslog up to email me with daily stats and any emergency and warning messages. (For my two or three readers who know what the heck I'm talking about: does that sound like a good system?) I'm pretty excited to have an actual computer job. The bank is a great place to work.

This afternoon my parents and grandparents came over to help us work on our giant bookcase. I hope we'll finish tomorrow and then I'll post some pictures.

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.

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 passed my exams today. I was a little worried last night when I kept failing practice exams, and this morning when I kept failing practice exams, and again this morning when I left my last minute studying to go in for a second interview for a job. But I passed the first exam (Core Hardware) with a score of 630 out of 800. The minimum passing score is 515. The second exam (Operating Systems) was the one I was having a hard time with on the practice tests, but I passed it with a score of 594. 505 was the minimum passing score. I'm very excited, and relieved that I don't have to pay for the exams again. Now I'm an Comptia A+ certified computer technician. The job interview went very well, but I haven't heard anything yet.

My job search is going well. I've got resumes in at several places. I've had a couple of interviews and lots of people willing to help me. I'm a little nervous that my last day is approaching fast and I don't have a new job secured yet, but I'm trusting that God will provide for us. The local newspaper editor didn't have a full-time opening when I talked to him yesterday, but he took my resume to a Missouri Press Association conference, told me about a part-time opening he had, told me about a job the Press Association might have soon, and loaned me a Mac. He had an old Mac that he wasn't using and he let me take it home so I could play around and build some Mac skills. It has OS 9.1, Photoshop 7.0, Pagemaker, 234 MHz, 64MB RAM and a 3GB HD. I've had some fun playing with that. I'm taking the exams for the Comptia A+ Computer Technician Certification tomorrow at 1. I read an 1100 page book to study for it and I've been doing some practice exams. I don't know if the cert will help me get a tech job, but I don't think it can hurt. And it's giving me something to do so I don't go nuts right now. People at the church have been very cool. Several people have told me that I've done a good job here and they'll miss having me as a minister. I'm glad that I'll still be a member of the church, because the people are so great. I think most people understand why I want to try something different.

If you have a free second, do me a favor. Go to the MSNBC Weekend Today webpage and vote for Anne from Wildwood, MO, for the Empty Nest Makeover. This is the mother of a friend of mine and it would mean a lot to her.

I just added some links to the list on the left. These are three blogs that I've started reading recently.

Kristin is a friend from Truman.

John is also a friend from Truman.

Techfreak (Brendon) is a blogger I met through Brendoman.com. He's taught me some Linux stuff and his blog is pretty interesting.

Sometime I want to organize the link list into categories. Happy reading.

1I thought a little update might be in order for those interested in my computer hobby. When I last brought it up I was running Mandrake Linux 9.2 on the computer that I got in 1998 and I had it online with my new DSL connection. I've made some new acquisitions and what I have now is pretty fun. I'll put the rest of the post in an extended entry to spare my non-geek readers.

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I checked the comment counts and the worship worship songs thread now has 140 comments. The Passion of the Christ discussion seems to have stalled out at 88 comments.