5 ms·

On a related note, the (slightly stylized) retelling of a time a commodities trader accidentally bought actual coal: http://thedailywtf.com/articles/Special-De

On a related note, the (slightly stylized) retelling of a time a commodities trader accidentally bought actual coal: http://thedailywtf.com/articles/Special-Delivery http://thedailywtf.com/articles/Special-Delivery

scarletham 11y ago
> slightly stylized Or "completely made up"
- jacquesm 11y ago
  The giveaway would be the WTFSE, only that actually seems to be a real exchange.
  - mortehu 11y ago
    The stories on that site almost always use placeholders. For example, the most recent post features an email from wtfinc.com.
- strictnein 11y ago
  I'd say almost everything they post has at least a kernel of truth. Likely, some commodities broker did get a delivery of coal once, whether it was on this scale or not is really the question.
jacquesm 11y ago
Hilarious story :) I worked for someone who was a variation on the 'Brad' theme for a while, absolutely infallible. One day I walked through the workshop where he was making a positive from which a mold would be made for a piece of machinery. There was an obvious error in it (it really isn't all that hard to make a mistake, moldmaking is intricate) and I tried to interrupt him to ask how he planned to solve this and told me to stick to my job (programming, not mechanical engineering). So fine. I went about my programming ways. A while later a bunch of expensive aluminum trial casts arrived from an even more expensive custom made mold (mold are very expensive) and after some very silent moments in the workshop there was a lot of cursing and yelling. I walked downstairs and asked what they planned to do about the two shafts running through each others center and was asked if I had known all along why didn't I say something... Not a good day, to say the least.
- mikeash 11y ago
  I hope you were all CYA'd up on that one!
morgante 11y ago
I was hoping for a lot better. The story's entirely made up and the XML parsing bit is especially painful. There's absolutely no reason that "false" will necessarily be represented as "0" for a particular API. Not to mention that it actually wouldn't be that hard to unload the coal. Yes, it would be annoying and cumbersome, but certainly not on the order of losing 80%.
- jpatokal 11y ago
  Really? I'd imagine the potential pool for buyers in the market for 28K tons of coal is pretty limited (read: power stations), and they have their supplies sorted out years in advance.
pippy 11y ago
I got a bit flustered at this snippet here: >Notice anything off about that XML? If you said, “value should be 0 instead of False”, then give yourself a pat on the back. Because text values can be valid XML for Boolean values. According to the XML Schema specification: 3.2.2.1 Lexical representation An instance of a datatype that is defined as ·boolean· can have the following legal literals {true, false, 1, 0}. 3.2.2.2 Canonical representation The canonical representation for boolean is the set of literals {true, false}. So a better correction would be 'false'.

scarletham 11y ago

> slightly stylized Or "completely made up"

jacquesm 11y ago
The giveaway would be the WTFSE, only that actually seems to be a real exchange.
- mortehu 11y ago
  The stories on that site almost always use placeholders. For example, the most recent post features an email from wtfinc.com.
strictnein 11y ago
I'd say almost everything they post has at least a kernel of truth. Likely, some commodities broker did get a delivery of coal once, whether it was on this scale or not is really the question.

jacquesm 11y ago

Hilarious story :) I worked for someone who was a variation on the 'Brad' theme for a while, absolutely infallible. One day I walked through the workshop where he was making a positive from which a mold would be made for a piece of machinery. There was an obvious error in it (it really isn't all that hard to make a mistake, moldmaking is intricate) and I tried to interrupt him to ask how he planned to solve this and told me to stick to my job (programming, not mechanical engineering). So fine. I went about my programming ways. A while later a bunch of expensive aluminum trial casts arrived from an even more expensive custom made mold (mold are very expensive) and after some very silent moments in the workshop there was a lot of cursing and yelling. I walked downstairs and asked what they planned to do about the two shafts running through each others center and was asked if I had known all along why didn't I say something... Not a good day, to say the least.

mikeash 11y ago
I hope you were all CYA'd up on that one!

morgante 11y ago

I was hoping for a lot better. The story's entirely made up and the XML parsing bit is especially painful. There's absolutely no reason that "false" will necessarily be represented as "0" for a particular API. Not to mention that it actually wouldn't be that hard to unload the coal. Yes, it would be annoying and cumbersome, but certainly not on the order of losing 80%.

jpatokal 11y ago
Really? I'd imagine the potential pool for buyers in the market for 28K tons of coal is pretty limited (read: power stations), and they have their supplies sorted out years in advance.

pippy 11y ago

I got a bit flustered at this snippet here: >Notice anything off about that XML? If you said, “value should be 0 instead of False”, then give yourself a pat on the back. Because text values can be valid XML for Boolean values. According to the XML Schema specification: 3.2.2.1 Lexical representation An instance of a datatype that is defined as ·boolean· can have the following legal literals {true, false, 1, 0}. 3.2.2.2 Canonical representation The canonical representation for boolean is the set of literals {true, false}. So a better correction would be 'false'.