Hi Henry,
ditto to all of the above!
As a newby myself I can clearly remember my first night out with my scope - the frustrations almost outweighed the wow factor of seieng anything. So I just slewed about manually looking at things which for me was enough for that time.
Stick with it - the advice you will get from all the knowledgable people here on IIS is invaluable and friendly.
Oh and after similar probs with alignment of MY finderscope on my first night I aligned it during the day. Then to be truthful I gave up on it (as it turned out that it needed to be shimmed which I was too lazy to do) and bought a lovely red dot finder which for me personally, once aligned with the OTA, I have found great.
Good luck, keep on smiling
Kerrie