membership statuses not being updated
Marilyn - I didn't see your CiviCRM version but from what I see (CiviCRM 4.4) status of members w/end date in the past is not changed from the initial status ('New') and the job logs 'success' every time after examining x 'memberships', updated 0 records. I suspect the job is only logging status- I'll try debugging, and send a patch. BTW, I tried this on the 'Demo' system (WP) and it seems to work.

So - have you checked the 'Membership Status Rules' (Administer>CiviMember>Membership Status Rules)?  You have to set those rules up to make your memberships transition from one status to the next, there are optional grace periods etc.  Also, what is the weight of your pending status rule? The 'weight' governs the order your memberships transition, another post had an issue w/that: https://forum.civicrm.org/index.php?topic=13921.0

Finally, there is this:
http://wiki.civicrm.org:8090/confluence/display/CRMDOC22/Update+Pending+Memberships (mind you this doc is from 2009)
HTH