2008-11-29 08:52:00
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2008-11-29 08:46:00
Well crap... Last night I got the familiar tingling on my skin again, just as we were getting ready for bed. The hyperventilation itself turned out to be quite modest, and I was back in bed in ten minutes. The aftermath however, was pretty heavy. About an hour later I wake up with uncontrollable shivers and a feeling of utter cold. I was pretty messed up :/ Thankfully Marli got me tucked in warmly and I fell into a shivery sleep.
The reason for this outbreak is pretty easily found: me and Marli had a small row earlier and my boss had given me some bad news about $CLIENT. Speaking of, the whole political crap at $CLIENT is getting to me... Meh...
kilala.nl tags: hyperventilation, health,
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2008-11-28 18:03:00
I've been using my Parrot CK3100 bluetooth carkit to my utmost satisfaction for a few years now. It worked a charm with my old Nokia handset. Once I switched to my iPhone I started having weird problems though. After half an hour driving, or maybe after a phone call or two, I wouldn't get any audio on the carkit anymore. I could make outgoing calls or receive incoming calls, but there simply wouldn't be any sound. Then after a few seconds the radio would cut back to the CD or whatever I was listening to.
I decided that the best course of action would be to re-flash my CK3100 with a newer software version. Lo and behold, the release notes for version 4.18b of the Parrot OS make specific notice of the known iPhone bug in version 4.17! Goodie!
Unfortunately Parrot's updating software is only available for the Windows platform and thus, as a fervent Mac addict, I had to find a solution. Luckily I still had a Windows XP disk image for Parallels, which was working nicely. In order to get Bluetooth working under Parallels, there's a few hoops to jump through. Below you'll find the quick & dirty guide to updating your Parrot using Windows in Parallels under Mac OS X.
1. Make sure your Windows install in Parallels is working nicely. Boot it up.
2. Take the installation DVD that came with your Mac and insert it into the drive. Connect Parallels to the drive so you can read the DVD. This automatically opens an install windows which you can close.
3. Browse the contents of the DVD, going into "Boot Camp -> Drivers -> Apple".
4. Run these two installers using an admin account: AppleBluetoothInstaller and AppleBluetoothEnablerInstaller.
5. Reboot Windows. It will now automatically detect the Bluetooth hardware.
6. Go to the Parrot downloads site and download the Parrot software update tool.
7. Go the the Parrot manuals site and read the upgrading manual for your model Parrot.
8. You'll need to install the software updater under Windows. The default location is under C:\Program Files\Parrot Software Update Tool.
9. Run the ParrotFlashWiz application as an admin user. You'll need to download new firmware versions into the prog-files directory and this requires admin rights.
10. Take it from there using the manual from step 7.
Presto!
kilala.nl tags: other tech, apple, sysadmin,
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2008-11-27 23:55:00
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The past week I've been sleeping too little. On the one hand I've been going to bed a bit too late, on the other I've woken up every night to help Marli and Dana for an hour after midnight. All in all I've been getting five to six hours of sleep each night, with me oversleeping two times already... |
kilala.nl tags: rhythm, toys, lego,
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2008-11-26 19:37:00
It seems that sometime within the last week Dana learnt to focus her eyes properly, thus recognizing faces and objects. I have to say that only few things are as beautiful as your daughter's smile when she recognizes you after waking up <3
Early in the morning or at midnight she'll be asleep in her bed with the room completely dark. I'll flip on the light, inducing in her panicky twists and turns that Menno and I usually accompany with startled cries of "Beaver and ducks! Beavers and ducks!" Then, when I hang over her bed to pick her up she'll peel open an eye, then another one and all of a sudden there's recognition and the most beautiful smile ^_^
kilala.nl tags: baby,
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2008-11-25 08:58:00
It's been a while since I worked on the backend of this website. There are a few things I've been meaning to work on, so I may end up doing them sooner or later.
* Code cleanup. Currently, things work fine but the code is verging on becoming a mess. In light of future management it's best if I start cleaning up things.
* Minor debugging. There are one or two small things which don't work properly that I still want to fix, like the page reload after leaving a comment.
* Standardization of tags. Up until now I've been using new and random tags for just about every post I make, except for the articles or recuring subjects. This has made the tagging of my posts rather useless. It'll be a hell of a job, but I want to go over all the tags I have and rewrite them to a standardized set.
* Speaking of tagging, I'd like to learn how to make a tag cloud. That should be an interesting experience and it might be a nice addition to the site.
Time to setup my staging area again! I'm not doing all this stuff on the production server ^_^
kilala.nl tags: website,
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2008-11-24 21:21:00
Finally, after years, I've seen Dr Strangelove ... (Wikipedia) and I completely understand the hype.
As I mentioned last year I think Peter Sellers is a phenomenal actor, so it goes without saying that I loved this film. The point the movie is trying to make however, is also a rather good one. And a bit scary if you start thinking about it too much. Hence why one should "learn to stop worrying" about the bomb :)
kilala.nl tags: movies,
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2008-11-24 20:58:00
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This evening I was browsing about the web, hopping from one anime/manga related website to the other. I love reading websites about Japan and the latest releases that arrive in Akihabara ^_^ |
Dutch law luckily allows us civilians to import just about anything we like; thank $DEITY. Of course there are -some- laws against stuff deemed to obscene for words, but those cases are completely warranted because the creation thereof is illegal. In recent years some grey areas have developed, but I sincerely hope we won't be seeing any Canadian/USA scenes as described by Elizabeth. Seriously! Customs opening your parcel and destroying part of what you bought because they offend someone's subjective standpoint? Not for me. If that starts happening I'm leaving the country... Or better yet: starting a campaign against the parties who legalized it.
I do believe that the .gov should look out for its people, but there are limits. Personal privacy is still very important!
EDIT:
Ouch! Here's another scary report. Some USAdian got his whole collection of >1200 anime and manga (and his seven PCs) confiscated because a parcel he'd ordered contained one (ONE!) volume that was deemed illegal as it was "obscene". He's gotten help in his defense, but still! Ouch!
kilala.nl tags: netherlands, politics, manga, anime,
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2008-11-22 20:56:00
Last week I borrowed a book from Dymphie that I'd heard about sometime last year. I'd been meaning to read it ever since. How Starbucks saved my life, by Michael Gates Gill.
Despite initial impressions this is not a book about some stockbroker or sysadmin that lives off of Starbucks' coffee exclusively. It's not about people who need coffee to get through their days unscathed. Nope...
To sum it all up, Mr Gill used to be a big shot exec in the New York marketing world. After a few bad choices in life and a few nasty turns in his luck he finds himself destitute and alone in the world. Now job, no clients, no wife and his kids moved away as well. Despite his upper class upbringing and his snobbish life so far, Mr Gill accepted a position at Starbucks after his sixtieth birthday. Getting by on low wages, doing menial jobs and serving people Mr Gill found more satisfaction than he'd ever had in his exec job.
Despite the rather bad dutch translation I sped through the book in about five hours. It really isn't that big of a read and it's nicely paced.
The reason why I wanted to read this book in the first place is that I've always had something stuck in the back of my head: things can always go wrong. It's very unlikely to happen, but there's always the off chance that something happens that prevents me from working in IT ever again. I dunno; maybe I develop a Linux allergy. ^_^; I've always told myself that, should it ever come so far, I'd never balk at menial jobs. I'd go flip burgers, work at a super market and in the evenings I'd clean offices. Sure, I wouldn't be able to do hard physical labour, but cleaning and cooking is definitely not below me.
An interview with Mr Gill is available on YouTube.
kilala.nl tags: reading, coffee, money,
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2008-11-22 20:37:00
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Since I've joined $CLIENT in October my life has been nothing but BoKS, BoKS, BoKS. It's great to be working with FoxT's security software again :) A lot of things have changed over the years, though the software is still very, very familiar. |
One of the things that's made me happy is that Fox Tech have -finally- made an official logo for their BoKS products! I find it odd that they've been marketing this software for over ten years and that their last logo dates back to the nineties. Said decrepit logo hasn't been used in ages and henceforth BoKS was just known by that: a plain text rendition of the name. By request of $CLIENT, Fox Tech have gotten of their hineys and created a new logo that matches their corporate identity.
As a side note: over the past few weeks I've seen a lot of in-depth troubleshooting and I've decided to share some of the stuff I've learnt. Hence you'll find that the BoKS part of the sysadmin section has been revamped :)
kilala.nl tags: boks, unix, sysadmin,
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2008-11-22 00:13:00
Midnight is Dana's last diaper change and meal for the night. The next one will be somewhere in the morning. Tonight was one of the few occasions where Marli didn't have to wake me and I appeared in the living room out of my own. This prompted a puzzled look from her.
Me: Oh, but there's one very good reason for me to be up at this ungodly hour!
Her: *pouty* Only one?
Me: Honey, Dana's the only one I will interrupt my sleep for and to wake up. You're the only one I need to go back to sleep again.
They both mean the world to me :)
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2008-11-20 21:43:00
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I spoke some more with my mentor and another prof on the matter of my schoolwork and the kids who were ripping it off. Luckily I seem to have misunderstood my mentor's initial e-mail a bit, since she's now indicated that she's behind me and that she shares my opinions on plagiarism and the prevention thereof. |
kilala.nl tags: school, internet,
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2008-11-20 21:38:00
I think I pulled an Asok today. IIRC it's not always a good thing to point out that your team could have been making more money than they did... Let's see how this pans out.
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2008-11-20 00:43:00
It seems our daughter is wisening up!
During her first month it seemed like I could keep on fooling her over and over again. Every night she would gladly open her mouth to welcome a spoon of vitamin K and D drops, which is essentially a spoon full of oil. And every night she would regret her choice, making faces at the awful taste!
Not anymore though! It's become harder and harder to fool and, up to the point of tonight where she will just lay there grinning slyly at my fruitless prodding with my spoon. I'll have her changed with a new diaper and while I'm reaching for the vitamin bottles she'll already get this knowing look in her eyes. Once the spoon reaches her mouth, she'll clamp her lips shut, giving me dirty looks. I'll still manage to get the oil down into her mouth, but she'll start frothing and spitting to keep the vitamins out.
Great... I'm curious how long it'll take for her to completely outsmart her dad :D
kilala.nl tags: baby,
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2008-11-19 21:24:00
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This new job at $CLIENT sure is a huge change from my previous position. Of course there's the higher pay which is great and all, but there's also job satisfaction! I'm no longer coming home tired from boredom. These days I'm dead beat from hard and intensive work. |
I guess I like the feeling of having real responsibilities, accountability and a mental challenge. It also helps that my colleagues are awesome people :)
kilala.nl tags: career, work, life,
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2008-11-19 20:57:00
From here, "Plagiarism aplenty". |
Well, this is certainly ironic... Not half a year ago my profs at college sang praise of the work I was doing and how helpful it was to publish my notes, calculations and papers on the web. This took a turn today when I received an e-mail from my mentor, asking me to remove all of my work from the web. |
Publishing my schoolwork was always meant to be an inspiration for fellow students, possibly helping them along in their own pursuits. It'd be great if a glance or two at my work had helped them over that little bump they'd run into. I explicitly mention on my site that people shouldn't be dicks and that my work is not meant to be turned in as their own. I warn the readers that any repercussions following plagiarism of my work are their own responsibility and that I won't be held accountable for their assholish behaviour.
Anyway... It's dilemma time! I dislike the thought of hampering my old profs in their daily work. They made me feel at home at HU and they taught me a lot. On the other hand, I believe that removing my work from the web will only amount to fighting symptoms. Students will always share papers among themselves, it's just that mine are more visible. Besides, it's a very real possibility that at least a dozen students have already downloaded every single file I put up on the web, so it's impossible to stamp out any copying from my work.
I explained to my mentor that this high visibility of my work could also work in their advantage. If they'd consider using anti-plagiarism software like Ephorus, all the work turned in by students would be automatically checked against any papers findable through the web including mine.
I'll be honest and admit that having my work up on my site is also in part down to my sense of pride. I'm fscking proud of all the hard work I did last school year and I believe that my papers are also a testimony to my qualities in documentation and education. Call it my portfolio if you will.
I'll mull things over a bit and have another chat with my profs. Let's see if we can find some common ground in this.
kilala.nl tags: school, internet, teaching,
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2008-11-18 19:12:00
Tonight was rather exciting insofar that I've done something I've never done before: I went over my boss's head. Unlike my previous CLM's, this one was well thought out and not just something that could be written off as "Oh, Thomas is goofing off again".
You see, tonight I was called by a colleague of mine who phoned me, as a mate, to tell me that he was going to give $CLIENT an ultimatum tomorrow. If his contract wasn't sorted out by this week, they wouldn't have to bother anymore. Since this gentleman is an outstanding colleague who's learnt BoKS very quickly I really don't want to lose him. And -that's- why I went to my bosses boss, calling him on his mobile around 18:30. We've had a huge workload the past few weeks and we cannot afford to lose people.
In a lot of places this would've been a CLM as it tends to piss people off. In this case things seem to be okay as both my boss and his boss expressed gratitude for my phone call... Let's see if I still have a job tomorrow :P
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2008-11-17 18:48:00
While I'm waiting for tech support, I might as well cover the upside of things as well. As mentioned we spoke to our financial advisor last week about getting a new mortgage.
We're currently in the process of searching for a real house (as opposed to an apartment), which ought to be a lot nicer with Dana. We'd been looking in the 200k euro area which has some nice housing in Almere. We were very happy to hear from our advisor that the dutch .gov usually advices a limit of 230k on mortgages for people with my salary, so we were looking well within our budget. That's always good to hear.
We also spoke to a realtor about selling our apartment and his guestimates were also well within the budgetary window we'd been considering. So good on that as well!
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2008-11-17 18:44:00
Speaking of overtime... Why is it that every time I try to implement a quick fix for a sucky SNAFU in our BoKS environment, I get stuck in the office at night? Every single fscking time! Case in point, last Friday I discovered a rather crappy mixup in our BoKS infrastructure. Nothing critical, but it was causing a lot of people discomfort nonetheless. I stayed late that day to troubleshoot the issue and to formulate a hypotheses on the required fixes.
Today I went over said fixes with my colleagues and at 1500 started the implementation of the first "quick fix". It was supposed to be done with within an hour, but I'm still stuck here. The replica server just doesn't want to do it's work and now I'm waiting for tech support to get back to me I'm looking at my twelfth hour on the job today and I'd really like to go home to Marli and Dana. Hacking and dining at the office just isn't as cool as it used to be. Now I have people to take care of...
kilala.nl tags: work, snafu, boks,
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2008-11-11 20:24:00
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The past five to six years we've had the same, small amount of pans in our kitchen. Two normal pans, one sauce pan and two frying pans. Some of these have gotten quite long in the tooth and Marli had also expressed the desire to get more and better pans. What with her becoming a proper house-mother it's only natural to oblige ^_^ |
So earlier this week we went off to Ikea to buy a bunch of new pans. Now pro's like Hersch might shiver at the thought of pans bought at Ikea, but for us they're definitely good enough. Sturdy quality, alright cooking qualities and all of that at a right price. So now we're the proud owners of a nice haul of new cookware. Baking trays, frying and grill pans and a few normal pans among which a huge 10 liter one.
This whole bunch ought to last us at least ten more years.
kilala.nl tags: cooking, toys,
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2008-11-11 12:19:00
Today I've taken the day off to recuperate from rather bad night. We woke around midnight to feed Dana, the both of us a little bitchier than usual. I fscked up a few things, which in turn led to a rather serious discussion about the near future with Dana. At the time it sounded to me like a lot of je t'accuse, which of course it wasn't.
That combined with a lack of real sleep and stress from work led to the heaviest bout of hyperventilation I've had in ages. It came quickly and heavily, with me almost fainting within minutes. I'm real glad that Marli kept a level head, first taking care of Dana and then of me. She knew I'd be safe for a few minutes while she did the rest. All in all everything took half an hour after which I'd gone completely weak and was shivery with cold. Because it put such a big strain on my body I thought it'd be better to rest up a day before returning to the office
kilala.nl tags: hyperventilation, health,
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2008-11-10 21:11:00
Tonight I made my first blood donation at the Sanquin blood bank. I'd be lying if I said I wasn't nervous at all, because I was. Luckily things went pretty smoothly and it helped that the lady emptying my veins was also the one who did my intake a few weeks ago.
Originally I was worried that my cholesterol problems would mean that I couldn't give any blood, but it didn't. Apparently they just filter out that cruddy stuff that mucks up my arteries ^_^ I was home in 1.5 hours, one half liter of blood less, but an experience richer.
Seriously... If you've ever considered volunteering for anything, but always thought it was too much hassle: please consider donating blood. It's a piece of cake and you might even help save someone's life.
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2008-11-10 07:10:00
Obviously our lives have changed a lot now that Dana's here and with all of the changes our professional lives have gone through. After seven weeks it seems that things are finally starting to ebb out though and there's a semblence of routine to our days. Unfortunately one part of said routine is that I spend way less time on the web and thus my journal gets neglected a little bit. So here's another bulk update :)
Last Friday was killer =_= I'd been making a few overhours left and right all week, but I'd decided to compensate these hours on Friday since we had some visitors coming over to our house. Of course it's obvious that the one day I have an appointment that things get hectic at the office. Out of the five people supporting BoKS there were only two in and one of them (not me) was set to get on his plane to Spain. Of course we just -had- to get a nasty production issue that had me home by 1700 instead of 1400 :/ Mind you, I'm not complaining about the work itself, it's just that life sometimes sends you these planning curve balls.
In contrast the weekend was both relaxed and veeery slow. Saturday we took care of the house and went shopping in Amersfoort. Since we had a little bit of leeway in our spending money we could afford to get Marli a substantial renewal of her post-pregnancy wardrobe. I also got an awesome new coat from Scotch & Soda. I just noticed that S&S has an outlet store in Batavia Stad, so maybe I ought to visit that place sometime soon :)
Sunday was the "slooow" part. Half of the day was spent watching the Spongebob marathon on Nickelodeon, with the other half being spent on the search for a new house. We're looking for a more modern streethouse, as opposed to the aging apartment we're living in. Almere may be Squaresville, but there's some affordable yet goodlooking houses over there.
kilala.nl tags: rhythm, work, relaxing,
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2008-11-05 07:52:00
I woke up this morning about twenty minutes after the election results were announced; around 0520 in this case. I couldn't wait to see the results so I checked the news while brushing my teeth ^_^
Good job America! I think you made the right choice! /o/
kilala.nl tags: politics,
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2008-11-02 19:21:00
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Our apartment building was originally buit in the sixties as part of a mass renewal of this part of Utrecht. At the time whole neighborhoods were hacked together in the span of years in order to accomodate the changing times. I'm not sure what the target demographic was at the time, but these days our building provides some of the more affordable housing in Utrecht. |
Originally the 85m^2 apartment was meant to house a family of five or six, with a big master bedroom in the back and two additional bedrooms. In our case the dividing wall for the master bedroom was torn down to create a living room double its original size.
The heating in this place is still in its original setup. While some of the radiators and the gas furnace were replaced fifteen years ago, the setup is still geared towards the house's original design. It also has one big draw back, with the furnace being in the middle of a serial chain of radiators.
We only want two rooms out of five to actually be heated and one of them is at the end of the series: Dana's room. The living room should also be nice and cozy, but it'd be ok if the rest of the house was chilly. The way things are right now I wish I could just cut off the "right half" of the heating, thus removing the kitchen, study and bathroom from the chain. Unfortunately I can't do that because the refill point for the system is located in the bathroom.
For now I think it would be a good idea to bring the living room back to it's original size; that way we'd only be heating 20m^2 instead of 40. Of course I'm not going to build a new wall, because the archway is actually pretty cool. Instead I reckon we'll install a nice set of heavy drapes in the arch, thus providing some insulation between the two parts of the living room.
Some of our neighbors have replaced the aging gas furnaces with new, high efficiency systems that also provide hot running water to the bathroom and kitchen. Unfortunately the only good place to install such a system is in the storage cabinet on the balcony. Our neighbors have done so, but at the cost of damage to the exterior walls of our building; something that the VVE isn't happy about. Such a renovation would also set us back a pretty penny, so I think we'd rather wait until buying a whole new house.
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2008-11-02 17:27:00
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This weekend saw a lot of "first times" for Dana ^_^ |
Nicely done! :)
We were over in Friesland for the weekend, for the birthday of Marli's mother. It was really nice seeing her siblings again. We also "abused" the occasion a little bit, by having Dana's grandparents keep an eye on her while we spent a few hours walking about Heerenveen. It was only three hours, but it was relaxing nonetheless. The first time since six weeks that we were alone together...
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2008-11-01 08:40:00
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Remember this one? The Morris Worm, from 1988 (found through Reddit). |
kilala.nl tags: childhood, internet, geeky, tv,
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2008-11-01 08:34:00
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Ho-ly crap! I'd heard about this software before, but I never imagined it worked this well! Shazam is a small application that can be installed on your iPhone (or other phone) and which fills a very particular niche. |
You know how you'll sometimes hear a song playing, but you just don't know what it 's called or who the artist is? It starts to itch in the back of your head and you just CAN'T let it go! That's what Shazam is for! Let the application listen to about ten seconds of the song and it'll try to recognize the song. I don't know how it works (yet), but it sure as heck does! It managed to recognize some of the more "exotic" songs I threw at it. This is definitely a keeper :)
kilala.nl tags: iphone, awesome, music,
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