Title: 少年マガジン (Shonen Magazine) Vol. 4/5
Publisher: Kodansha
Pages: 674 (Special Double Issue)

This week's feature is Inoue Waka with a special pullout 2004 calendar. As usual, just some bikini shots. The featured comic is a christmas chapter of Godhand Teru with first few pages colored.

I guess I've been spoiled with the one chapter manga bonuses that have been showing up recently (Tanpo and Okitori), so nothing out of the ordinary in this issue.

Negima. ３７時間目 ネギのキッスは誰のモノ？ (37th Hour, Negi's Kiss is Whose?): The give groups of girls competing for Negi's kiss all have found him, except that each is a fake (Negi created copies of himself last chapter). They find out about the fakes and make them disappear by kissing them. When the real Negi comes back, he bumps into Nodoka and Yue. Negi confesses to Nodoka that he loves all his students, but as he finishes, Yue trips up Nodoka and she accidentally kisses Negi. Nodoka's card then appears, but alas, the head teacher catches them all fooling around outside at night and makes them kneel in the lobby.

Hamanaka Ai: ０１６　いざ合宿 (016, Time for Training Camp): The tutors and students go to training camp, which is just a front for a hot-springs resort. They pretend to all be siblings to get a discount and just mess around.

Tsubasa: ２８　二人の姫 (28, Two Princesses): Shaoran and company head to the abandoned castle to look for Sakura and the missing children. However, they are not to be found and tension arises rises between them and the townsfolk, since they're still under suspicious being strangers and all. However, they continue to search for her. Meanwhile, Sakura finds herself in the dark with her ankles in shackles and looks around to find a gigantic painting of who she calls a Princesses and sees children walking outside her cell.

Title: ヤングマガジン (Young Magazine) Vol. 4/5
Publisher: Kodansha
Pages: 560 (Special Double Issue)

Featured girl this week is Aya Matsuura, among others. Aya's photos are quite tame given the other girls in the magazine (Sakura Mizutani...for one). I didn't bother opening the sealed pages for the two other girls.

XXXholic: 36: Last issue ended the Monkey's hand story, so this week's is just a mini, non-pertinent story before the CLAMP gals go on vacation until issue 9. Kimihiro stumbles upon this resturant run by a fox. The fox's child discovers a broken arrow tail in Kimihiro's bag and receives it as a gift. In exchange the fox gives Kimihiro a treat from the restaurant for Yuuko.

Since XXXholic isn't coming back until the 9th issue and I haven't caught up on the other manga in the magazine that I'm reading, I'll just be posting Shonen Magazine stuff until then.

The feature article about outsourcing computer work to India was a bit insightful, although I've already done some thinking about the issue. Fortunately, I'm not one of the irked victims of outsourcing, although I've experienced it (i.e. had to deal with one on one of my two computer support phone calls I've had to make).

My stand is this: It's a shame that a lot of people are losing jobs in the computer sector, but having been though college during the dot com boom, I see it as stabilization. Early in my college days in CS100 and even before in high school, I would always be amazed at the number of people who want to do computer science but have absolutely no interest in computers at all. Their rationale was that it was where all the jobs where, and so rather than pursue what they were genuinely interested in, they would follow the money rather than their hearts. Hell, I was even good friends with some of them and they were nice people, but really didn't enjoy working with computers. So during that period, a lot of people got jobs in computer science, an abnormal amount if I may be so bold to say. But now, a lot of people are losing jobs, an abnormal amount. You add two negating abnormalities and you're left with normalities (analogy not applicable to psychological abnormalities).

There's also a good point made that everytime some type of work has been obsoleted, there's always been a backlash like how computers relieved secretarial work, agricultural innovations reduced the number of farmers, etc... But if history shows anything, that means people just have to better themselves. There's always some skill that can't be given to outsourced in the near future, and those are what you have to anticipate. I like to call it "making yourself future-proof." You can always improve yourself in some way or another. Sometimes I see teens today who waste all their time doing frivilious things. Those are the same people who will be complaining in the future.

Of course, I'm painting my opinion with a very broad brush, but that's how I see it.

And a note about the journalism, the three highlighted quotes are: "People get top quality here, says one Mumbai coder. We're not just cheaper, we're better." "U.S. White collar-workers told blue collars 'change is good.' Now they're hearing it, too." "Does outsourced labor piss you off? Then it's time to return your iPod and your cell phone." The first quote would make Indians sound arrogant, a la a prick. The second quote would make Indians sound like they're taunting, a la a prick. The last quote would make them sound spiteful, a la a prick. Geez, I wonder what they want the readers to feel when they glance at this article?

I've just been doing my taxes via TurboTax.com and was quite excited this year cuz of my new Hybrid, which was advertised to net me up to $2000. Well, I didn't even get 20% of that. Since I started my job in September, I don't have much money income for last year. Technically, I would be a low-income person (not low enough for the Earned-Income Credit, but pretty low). And since I'm a low income person, I would be receiving a lot of my money back anyway since JPL deducts a lot from wages. If they actually did deduct all $2000, I would have had to pay no federal taxes what-so-ever, which wouldn't have been nice. However, the government needs money to operate, so they would only let me take $300 from the potential of $2000. Grr...

If I had it my way, I would have liked to pay MORE taxes and taken a bigger chunk of that Hybrid deduction because the clean vehicle deduction is money already set aside that wouldn't be used in any type of governmental programs, like NASA. However, the federal taxes that I am getting back does bite into governmental programs, which I would rather not do. That's also the same reason why I don't take deductions off charitable donations either.

Oh well, $300 is $300. That doesn't cover my latest shipment for Amazon Japan though.