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Jordan7hm posted:I’m on a time and materials engagement (uggggh) so I’m booking my time to the quarter hour on that project. Then I’m also on a couple fix few things so I’m booking time properly there too though not to that level of detail. I work on between one and six clients a day. The most useful thing I ever did was make a spreadsheet where I just enter the time I start something, the client, and Excel does everything else, including quarter-hour rounding. Why yes, I am looking for another job, why do you ask?
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May 11, 2021 03:25
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Realized today I haven't submitted my tech reimbursement expense report the last two months. I wonder how many people are in my shoes since they switched it from an automatic payment this year.
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May 11, 2021 04:04
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Banzai 3 posted:I work on between one and six clients a day. The most useful thing I ever did was make a spreadsheet where I just enter the time I start something, the client, and Excel does everything else, including quarter-hour rounding. Yeah when I complain to the audit guys about my 20 row timesheets they laugh and tell me about the weeks in busy season where they’re billing to 50+ codes. I can’t imagine doing that on a regular basis. The admin overhead is just the worst kind of work.
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May 11, 2021 04:15
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Banzai 3 posted:I work on between one and six clients a day. The most useful thing I ever did was make a spreadsheet where I just enter the time I start something, the client, and Excel does everything else, including quarter-hour rounding. get toggl rather than loving about with this poo poo
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May 11, 2021 10:09
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Stating down the barrel of my last couple of weeks in corporate life. After this I get one more year on a guaranteed salary and then it’s all profit share. @Kyoon or others in management consulting, a quick question. The business I’m joining isn’t primarily a consultancy but we have a small side business that arose out of our main vertical which should probably be priced and structured the same way as a consulting gig. What is normal for consultants - fixed fee, capped fee with hourly billing, blended rates, something else? Or is it very different at different shops? E: the side business is essentially management consulting specifically for law firms.
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May 11, 2021 10:29
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I believe law firms typically bill hourly against some kind of retainer so you're best off structuring in a similar way that they understand, but here are the ways we bill: Deliverable based: We do Thing X for $Y. $Y never changes. Time based blended: You pay us per time unit worked, bigger time units. For bigger projects, we bill a team based rate (here are your team members, the team costs $X/week total). Time based actuals: For hourly work on small projects, we typically require an open PO or retainer. We show individual bill rates and bill by individuals. Risk based billing: this is a loving nightmare but we will occasionally put fees at risk based on achievement of certain agreed upon metrics. do not do this. The billing depends on the project, the risk to us, the risk to the client, their purchasing preferences, etc. But we work for very big companies with standard purchasing requirements for professional services. If you are working for smaller firms that have less established purchasing departments you may be better able to dictate standard terms. How big are your clients? Are we talking like the Kirkland Ellises of the world or Joe Blow Law Firm Down the Way. Never cap fees on time based actuals. It's all the worst aspects of both time based and deliverable based billings, in that you wear it if you go over budget but you don't get any benefit if you come in under budget.
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May 11, 2021 10:44
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KYOON GRIFFEY JR posted:get toggl rather than loving about with this poo poo Oh this looks quite nice! Never heard of it before. Absolutely would run afoul of our policies on use of unapproved third-party services though so I’m out of luck.
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May 11, 2021 11:57
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Banzai 3 posted:Oh this looks quite nice! Never heard of it before. Absolutely would run afoul of our policies on use of unapproved third-party services though so I’m out of luck. run it on your phone on your desk maybe? but yeah lookin for a new job is a good idea
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May 11, 2021 12:41
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KYOON GRIFFEY JR posted:I believe law firms typically bill hourly against some kind of retainer US Specific: This is correct for civil law firms representing businesses. Those representing individuals suing businesses are more frequently paid on contingency in many areas of civil law. For smaller cases in criminal law and certain real estate transactional work, flat fees, or what are flat fees in practice, are the norm. That said your sentiment is correct, 100% of lawyers in the US will be familiar with hourly billing against a retainer. Also in our experience as a law firm, small law firms (<10 attorneys) very often make for terrible clients, so be wary of that. Top up the retainer before any work heavy month for newer clients if they will allow it. Stay on top of billing. CarForumPoster fucked around with this message at 13:39 on May 11, 2021 |
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May 11, 2021 13:37
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KYOON GRIFFEY JR posted:Amazingly helpful That is an awesome post, thank you very much. My business partner and I both did our time in BigLaw (I was at an AmLaw 10 firm and she was at an equivalent in her country) and we know that for some of our clients, they won’t go for real time based billing for the kind of thing we have in mind here, but could be persuaded to a model that’s already established with MBB etc. We have a few BigLaw clients and a larger number of small (2-5 practitioner) ones. Probably want to offer differentiated services and pricing models for those groups.
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May 11, 2021 13:49
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KYOON GRIFFEY JR posted:Deliverable based: We do Thing X for $Y. $Y never changes. We do fixed fee / deliverable a lot, but $Y always changes. Also fee at risk if we think it will help us win the work. We try to avoid t&m as much as possible but still do it with the feds quite a bit. I haven’t seen t&m with a cap too often.
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May 11, 2021 14:38
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Sundae posted:I'm with you re: never deny sick leave, and I've tried to be super clear to my workers about that kind of thing. Your leave is your leave. I appreciate you asking for the days off, and if it's vacation time, the only time I'd even consider denying it is if we literally are manufacturing an GMP campaign during those days and you didn't give me enough time to find a backup. Even then, I'll try not to if I can avoid it. This is one of those simultaneously fulfilling and depressing things as a manager. I've had a few like that, the most memorable one was a person whose spouse had a sudden major illness. They called me to offer to work part-time or catch up or something, I just told them take as long as you need and if I can help in any way let me know. Even worse was they felt the need to apologize for the lack of notice on taking time off when they came back. I just told them there's nothing to apologize for, ultimately this is just a job and they need to take care of the important things in their life. There are a lot of real assholes out there.
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May 11, 2021 15:22
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$Y changes if Thing X changes but otherwise nah we've traditionally done much more deliverable based but are seeing some swings back to time and materials. plus ca change etc
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May 11, 2021 15:27
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Recently my boss swung manic again and has been drowning me in surprise tasks. I finally told my supervisor I'm exhausted and need something taken off my plate. She told me to call our employee assistance program and take a free counseling session to discuss resilience. 65% done on my degree. I live for the day I will give my boss
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May 11, 2021 17:12
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strawberrymousse posted:Recently my boss swung manic again and has been drowning me in surprise tasks. I finally told my supervisor I'm exhausted and need something taken off my plate. Wow what an rear end in a top hat. Are you allowed to schedule those during paid time and take a nap?
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May 11, 2021 17:45
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Banzai 3 posted:Oh this looks quite nice! Never heard of it before. Absolutely would run afoul of our policies on use of unapproved third-party services though so I’m out of luck. There are websites that track time. Is toggl a website? If so i dont consider that a 3rd party service. Are you also disallowed from using unapproved search engines?
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May 11, 2021 18:20
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downout posted:There are websites that track time. Is toggl a website? If so i dont consider that a 3rd party service. Are you also disallowed from using unapproved search engines? You and I being rational people, I’d agree and argue this isn’t an issue. My firm’s Acceptable Technology Use Policy would not agree. In theory, I could use this if I didn’t enter any client names, but then I need a reconciling list between how I use Toggl and what I’ve worked on, and that’s just more trouble than it’s worth when I have an Excel system that works well enough.
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May 11, 2021 19:33
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I'm starting to realize that the best counterattack is "do you have a due date for this?" Former boss: "MJP, please oversee this task that will require you to constantly email the only authorized person to do the work" Me: "Sure, do you have a due date for this?" Former boss: "No, it's just been pending for a while" It's wonderful how the only time I've ever felt "empowered" to tell people no was the fact that I am literally the only person left doing this technology. Declining meeting invites with impunity, saying "I am fully committed and do not have the time available, we'll put it in the backlog", or telling people to submit paperwork to have something put through intake processes and we'll cover it in Q3 are just so very satisfying. TCS is our preferred backfill vendor so if all goes well I'm gonna be the only person left for a while, until I quit. Love too need Azure engineers and get C# developers submitted as candidates.
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May 11, 2021 20:01
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Banzai 3 posted:I work on between one and six clients a day. The most useful thing I ever did was make a spreadsheet where I just enter the time I start something, the client, and Excel does everything else, including quarter-hour rounding. The past two weeks have been solid days from 5am, though a couple have started before then. Last week it was so bad I got sick, so this week I've been telling people when I can reasonably get to their request. I'm not oncall and we're not a support team; things are very project focused (so this should not be). Today was light at only three scheduled meetings. I think I had only twenty or thirty task switches. I built my own tool a long time ago to track time. Moreso than billing, it helps with mentally switching from one task to another, since it serves as a 5sec boundary. I can't really imagine the wasted time having to open Excel or a website, which has doubtless logged you out, especially since computers should be busy running other stuff (memory/CPU waste) and startup is slow. Save the therbligs!
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May 12, 2021 00:13
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Therbligs? Are you telling me that I wasn't the only kid who had to read Cheaper by the Dozen?
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May 12, 2021 00:47
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MJP posted:Therbligs? Are you telling me that I wasn't the only kid who had to read Cheaper by the Dozen? That was required reading for me in either late elementary school or junior high. I forget which.
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May 12, 2021 05:08
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C levels have been discussing how to approach returning back to the office and how WFH is going to be handled in the future. CEO comes out today and says, it's up to each individual manager how to handle that. Each individual manager said, haha bullshit, I'm gonna check in with my Director. Each Director said, that's bullshit, I'm going to check with my VP. Each VP said, that's bullshit, I'm going to check with my SVP. The WFH discussion is now back where we started.
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May 12, 2021 05:37
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Banzai 3 posted:You and I being rational people, I’d agree and argue this isn’t an issue. My firm’s Acceptable Technology Use Policy would not agree. In theory, I could use this if I didn’t enter any client names, but then I need a reconciling list between how I use Toggl and what I’ve worked on, and that’s just more trouble than it’s worth when I have an Excel system that works well enough. Well just make sure you include that additional time necessary to track that due to their policies. Wouldn't want to do anything outside of compliance.
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May 12, 2021 05:37
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My job honestly isn't really a problem. I just don't want to work anymore. It's the act of going to work which is what upsets me. Why can't I just like, find a billion dollars or so laying on the ground so I can go about living my life in ease.
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May 12, 2021 05:38
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Renegret posted:My job honestly isn't really a problem. I just don't want to work anymore. It's the act of going to work which is what upsets me. Legit why I buy Powerball and Mega tickets. Gives me that dream for an hour every time and that's worth $2 to me.
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May 12, 2021 05:45
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insider posted:Legit why I buy Powerball and Mega tickets. Gives me that dream for an hour every time and that's worth $2 to me. poo poo, just an hour? I get a good few days of dreaming out of a lotto ticket. Completely worth it.
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May 12, 2021 05:56
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Renegret posted:C levels have been discussing how to approach returning back to the office and how WFH is going to be handled in the future. CEO comes out today and says, it's up to each individual manager how to handle that. I’m amazed that middle management are not only afraid of giving out autonomy to their subordinates, but afraid of it themselves
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May 12, 2021 13:38
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Sundae posted:That was required reading for me in either late elementary school or junior high. I forget which. Man, I liked that book. I read it a TON. It was set in a part of NJ near where I grew up so it was so interesting to read about the area at the turn of the century. I also got hooked on the idea of doing things efficiently to the detriment of my future life, but that's out of scope for corporate threads. Also the book didn't age well but then again neither did many things from the 19teens. We finally got allowed to request to come in and pick up personal effects from our office, which has been closed to all but super duper essential people (with SVP approval required daily to enter) since March '20. They sold the property (and others in the area) to consolidate us into a full-on hybrid model with hotel desks in the main corporate offices nearby. My turn to pack came up yesterday, and the place had some big Chernobyl Exclusion Zone energy.  They did giveaways for office chairs and monitors. Some lucky folks got basically brand new Steelcase chairs  The shadow of where the bland corporate art hung is visible against the sun-aged off-white beige of the wall that once surrounded it. It's been there for at least 35 years.  There's a big, big statement to this slumping 2019 desk blotter calendar. A big, postmodernist statement.  I neglected to empty my thermal pot for making tea. That water's been standing at room temperature for over a year. Nothing a week's worth of citric acid soaking won't fix, but still, ew.  I left a message behind. Don't know if anyone who'll see it can read Cyrillic, but it says "Greetings from Pripyat". Maybe one day, as the lowest bidder for liquidating desktop PCs and cubicle dividers makes their way through, a team full of underpaid contractors might have someone whose family came from Ukraine or Russia. They might see it and have a sad smile. The desk with the whiteboard had its name tags removed by its previous occupant, but some part of his spirit still remained on that stilted message, scrawled in bad handwriting. I was in this job for only 4ish months before we went into lockdown and I will 100% not miss that office. I'm just glad they finally let us get our stuff, rather than claiming that professional movers would be "very careful" about our things.
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May 12, 2021 14:20
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Renegret posted:My job honestly isn't really a problem. I just don't want to work anymore. It's the act of going to work which is what upsets me. This. The last couple months have been exceptionally hard at work, not just because of the work itself but because staying motivated has been a huge challenge. April was better (my resting heart rate in Feb/Mar was up 10bpm because of stress) but it’s getting bad again. Pretty sure it’s the fully remote work, but it’s not like I want to go back into the office right now either. I dunno. The reality is I’m well compensated, working for a company that takes covid seriously, and basically in as good a position as possible. Nonetheless the pandemic has been brutal for my mental health.
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May 12, 2021 14:28
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Boiled Water posted:I’m amazed that middle management are not only afraid of giving out autonomy to their subordinates, but afraid of it themselves Middle management is, very rationally, deathly afraid of making any decision there's the slightest chance anyone above them might disapprove of. This fact alone accounts for a lot of corporate morassness.
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May 12, 2021 14:29
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Eric the Mauve posted:Middle management is, very rationally, deathly afraid of making any decision there's the slightest chance anyone above them might disapprove of. This fact alone accounts for a lot of corporate morassness. it's probably to everyone's benefit. consider the quality of the average middle manager - the fewer decisions they make the better
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May 12, 2021 14:34
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Boiled Water posted:I’m amazed that middle management are not only afraid of giving out autonomy to their subordinates, but afraid of it themselves I suspect my manager was exaggerating when he told us this. And also probably adding his own lies to avoid personal responsibility. But it was funny as was told and I always choose to believe the funny thing. e: the one thing he did say that I 100% believe because it's very on brand for the top, it's now unacceptable to call it a hybrid wfh work model. Not allowed to say it. Hybrid work is an evil term and you will get a talking to for daring to say it. It's called a flexible model and you will like that term. They do this a lot with naming things and I really don't get it. (I get it in that it's bike shedding but, I mean, come on.) Renegret fucked around with this message at 15:06 on May 12, 2021 |
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May 12, 2021 14:53
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Seen on Jalopnik from here:quote:While Nissan’s business transformation is making steady progress, there is “continued business risk due to semiconductor supply shortage and raw material price hike in this fiscal year,” the company said in its statement Tuesday. “While working to minimize the impact of these risks and factoring the potential impact, Nissan has set operating profit forecast at plus or minus zero." Being in BI, seeing someone set the profit forecast at ±0 makes me absolutely giddy.
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May 12, 2021 17:22
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My company sent out a survey to gauge peoples' feelings on working from home I basically all but begged to never be asked to commute to an office for nonspecific reasons again
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May 12, 2021 17:32
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Not a Children posted:My company sent out a survey to gauge peoples' feelings on working from home My bigcorp is remaining silent! Also a large portion of our business was previously done through travel to client sites...... Who knows what the future will hold?
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May 12, 2021 17:33
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My office is going hybrid and want 2 consecutive days in office per week, but never Fridays. They also are sticking with full cubes with a mandatory mask policy. So no butterfly desk setup, thank God. I wish they required vaccination but being in the South that was always a pipe dream. Current eta for this is end of Q3 or start of Q4.
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May 12, 2021 17:39
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We did an anonymous third party survey run by a consultant, in which I railed on the company for never raising the salary of anyone below C suite and perhaps the division leads and swore that if they don’t let me continue to WFH full time, I can and will find a better office position within a month. In perhaps unrelated news, I received a bonus equivalent to half of my monthly salary—the first and only bonus I’ve ever received. No one else has mentioned getting a bonus. None of the people above me have taken credit for this bonus being distributed. Not a single person has acknowledged this happening. I’ve decided not to say a goddamn word about it.
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May 12, 2021 20:10
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broken pixel posted:We did an anonymous third party survey run by a consultant, in which I railed on the company for never raising the salary of anyone below C suite and perhaps the division leads and swore that if they don’t let me continue to WFH full time, I can and will find a better office position within a month. Maybe you'll keep getting them. 
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May 12, 2021 20:20
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How the gently caress does someone become a Project Manager II and be so completely inept at sticking to deadlines??
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May 12, 2021 22:35
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Just shed fully 1/3 of my direct reports! (A guy just quit today) It’s weird cuz I have no idea what I am allowed to ask etc. Apparently asking where the person is going is ok (but they don’t have to say, of course). Pretty amicable though it seems like the main factor was comp (ours sucks but we also don’t do layoffs like other comparable companies do). Sucks that he’s leaving but always gotta do what’s best for ya so no hard feelings.
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May 12, 2021 22:50
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