I started working this Tuesday after accepting an offer for full-time employment with BarcoView in Duluth. It took a few days to get everything settled with my employment, but by the end of the week I had a spacious cubicle, access badge, and workstation at my disposal as I seek to come up to speed with our business. My boss and several other engineers have been working to quickly provide me with a broad view of Barco’s business and our role in the systems integration group. The biggest suprise so far has definitely been the amount of paperwork associated with the engineering process; it’s a definite change from how IT operates. It looks like my first task will be to aid a Design Verification Test (DVT) process.
There are plenty of places to eat in the immediate vicinity of work and I have already eaten at Frontera, Moe’s, Jersey Mike’s, and Wendy’s. It’s taking between 35 and 40 minutes to get to work from Smyrna, so I’m definitely looking forward to moving into our new apartment and cutting my commute time down. Titus and I eventually decided on an apartment in Norcross and we will be moving into the new apartment next weekend. Most of our utility providers will stay the same, so I just need to see about having them transferred. My parents should also be coming up to help us with the move.
I’ve spent my off hours absorbed in World of Warcraft and working on reworking my blog to better fit the object-oriented programming paradigm. I flirted briefly with a full migration to PHP5, as well, but I eventually decided that the new classes and objects didn’t really gain me as much as I had hoped. I’ll likely wait until my hosting provider decides to offer PHP5 before switching.
This past week has been quite eventful. I got the call Monday morning from Patrice over at Barco offering me a full-time job as a software/hardware systems integration engineer. I was quite excited about the offer, but I asked for a week’s time to think it over. I scheduled a meeting on Tuesday with Lara Hanley over at the Georgia Tech Alumni Association to discuss my options.
I drove down to Dothan Wednesday to discuss my offer and spend a nice evening with my parents and grandparents on Mom’s birthday. The kitchen has been completely stripped of wallpaper and a few other things in preparation for a thorough remodeling. It seems like I come home to a new house each time I visit now. I completed my 2004 tax returns Thursday morning with the help of TurboTax Deluxe 2004 and made my yearly IRA contribution. Even with all the hand-holding TurboTax does, I still feel daunted by the tax code. After a nice lunch at Pizza Hut, I bade farewell to Mom and drove up to Auburn for the remainder of the day. There I was able to partake of ping pong, PC troubleshooting, and a nice home-cooked meal.
I returned to Atlanta on Friday to formally accept the job offer from Barco. I tracked down the offer package at our leasing office, filled out some paperwork, and sent some e-mails to get everything squared away. Some of the details will have to wait until Monday to be finalized, and I don’t yet know when I can start working. Titus and I hit ProMove on Saturday before heading up to the Norcross and Duluth areas to look for a new apartment. My Aunt Kathy and Uncle Tinker were in town to see the Fry’s and they graciously treated us to a nice dinner at Applebee’s. Whew, what a week!
Numerous reports are coming in that the first volume of Tenjho Tenge has been extensively edited by publisher CMX for content. There’s a detailed list of the edits in an article on ListerX and a lengthy discussion on the Anime On DVD forums with fans weighing in and links to both the edited and original (NSFW) content for objective comparison. From what I gather, the vast majority of edits involve cropping and added clothing to remove nudity and sexual content. To complicate matters, the edits fly in the face of CMX’s purported claim of near-perfect authenticity.
Tenjho Tenge, or simply TenTen, was already well-known and quite popular in fan circles for its candid depiction of sex and violence prior to its domestic release. I am familiar enough with the content and premise of the series to say for certain that it is intended for a mature demographic. CMX’s decision to edit TenTen, label it as Teen, and stick it next to the likes of Yu-Gi-Oh! seems ill-conceived at best. I suppose the promise of a wider market and ever higher sales can often be too great. I’m severely disappointed.
I was looking forward to enjoying a mature manga series that didn’t delve into darkness and depression quite as much as Berserk, which has done quite well in unaltered form despite being even more graphic than Tenjho Tenge. A proper domestic release of Tenjho Tenge easily has the potential to be the breakout manga series for mature readers. As it is, I will definitely not be supporting CMX’s decision to release TenTen in its current form.
I’ve compiled a list of resources and discussion threads following the editing of Tenjho Tenge. I will try to keep this list updated as things pan out.
Edit: Anime On DVD regularly purges their discussion forums of old topics. Most of the original discussion have been lost. The most current threads can be found in the Manga Editing forum.
