I was going to take today to rant about my inability to find a “normal” (i.e., not special-purpose) shampoo. However, I’m going to save that rant for a slow news day. Today, everything has been overtaken by the news:

I GOT A JOB !!!1!

(Note the tell-tale insertion of “1” into the series of exclamation points. This is to indicate I am so excited, I accidently let go of the shift key as I was typing them.)

Starting Monday, I will begin working Dann’s old job as a computer technician for A Local Computer Store. I will build computers to customer specifications, learning about all the new hardware and what needs to be done to get the different pieces from different companies working together smoothly. I’ll also have the opportunity to learn more advanced stuff, like wireless networking. Dann used the hands-on experience he got working this job for a couple of years with the book stuff he studied in his spare time and landed a job as a Network Administrator for A Major Georgia Real Estate Company.

Pan's computer died (see Sunday’s entry), so Dann went to A Local Computer Store to get some parts. (They still give him the employee discount.) While he was there, he heard that one of the guys was quitting in a week. Dann asked me if I would be interested in applying for the job. I said yes, so he called up the owner and told him I was looking for a job if he was hiring. The owner said he was hiring, and was very grateful -- two years ago when he advertised for the last opening, he put a five-line ad in the classifieds with his fax number and got over 300 resumes. Most of them were from massively overqualified IT (information technology) managers who were unemployed and willing to work an entry-level job. He also got about 50 phone calls from people who had tracked down his phone number (somehow) and wanted an interview. He was very happy not to have to go through that process again.

It’s the kind of thing you can’t plan for. If I’d come down a month earlier or a month later, the job wouldn’t have been open. But I planned to the best of my ability, considering logistics and planning around the holidays, as well as waiting until my student loans were paid off before I moved – and God allowed things to work out. Also, I don’t have any real qualifications in the hardware side of the computer field – it’s an entry level job, so I don’t really need any – but I got the job on the strength of Dann’s good word and my ignorance. (“No bad habits!” they said happily.)

Anyway, I emailed them my resume and put Dann down as a reference. They called back and set up an appointment for an interview this morning. Several hours after I returned from the interview, they called and offered me the job. Yay! Two words, baby: disposable income.

Mom was thrilled. She had been praying for me just this morning, and asked God for some specific assurance for me from the Scriptures. She doesn’t usually do this; the last time was when I went in for surgery several years ago. She felt that God gave her Psalm 107, and especially verse 7, specifically for me. “And he led them forth by the right way, that they might go to a city of habitation.” (KJV)

Few people know this about me, but at one time I had declared a Computer Science minor in college. Then I took a course in FORTRAN and quickly decided that programming, while a fun hobby, was probably not going to be my career. I switched to English instead. At the time, I thought I was leaving the computer field behind for good – it was just too expensive to keep up with unless you had a job that allowed you to test drive all the latest hardware. Now, I’ve come back. For how long? A year? Two? More? Who knows? We’ll see. For now, at least, I have a direction.