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I Tried to Buy an Actual Barrel of Crude Oil

bloomberg.com

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Re: I Tried to Buy an Actual Barrel of Crude Oil

#121

Post by pippy »

strictnein wrote: post #10

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

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'.

Re: I Tried to Buy an Actual Barrel of Crude Oil

#122

Post by oxryly1 »

jallmann wrote: post #93
kyleblarson wrote: post #49

I worked at a small quant fund and we once had a bug that caused our roll forward trade to fail on a rather large position of front month WTI contracts. We technically were going to have to take delivery since we were long the contracts at expiry, but our brokerage was nice enough to fix the situation for us.

This is a recurring nightmare of mine: forgetting to close out a commodity futures contract, then suddenly having 20,000 bushels wheat (or whatever it was) show up on my doorstep one morning. Brrrr.

Ok, in the commodities trading business there have GOT to be stories of this sort of thing happening.

Re: I Tried to Buy an Actual Barrel of Crude Oil

#123

Post by JoblessWonder »

comex wrote: post #4

Another notable excerpt from the linked state safety agency document ( http://www.michigan.gov/documents/cis_wsh_cet5041_90142_7.do... ): -- Two employees of a fertilizer company in Riga, Michigan, were assigned to install a new float valve in an old 35-foot deep cistern for a new 300-foot well. This cistern was covered with a concrete slab with entry through a covered manhole. The first worker entered the cistern an…

I'm more upset that he calls it a PDF when it is clearly a word document...

Re: I Tried to Buy an Actual Barrel of Crude Oil

#124

Post by briandear »

SCdF wrote: post #105
SixSigma wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> since they were used as a condiment rather than a staple food such an unstaple food that The Times of India has a page dedicated to track the price of onions http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/topic/Onion-prices

Yeah calling onion a condiment is pretty crazy, Onion is the basis of a huge amount of cuisine.

Not in America in the 1950s.

Re: I Tried to Buy an Actual Barrel of Crude Oil

#125

Post by fnordfnordfnord »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #87
fnordfnordfnord wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You send someone like me to China, after you do what GP said to do.

Completely offtopic: Many moons ago, you emailed me advice for Burning Man. Before I forget again, I just wanted to say thank you so much.

I had forgotten that was you. I'm glad it worked out well. Thanks for remembering.

Re: I Tried to Buy an Actual Barrel of Crude Oil

#126

Post by digi_owl »

nickpsecurity wrote: post #104
LoSboccacc wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

and then there's FOOF https://web.archive.org/web/20150825171826/http://pipeline.c... (Webarchive since original seems down)

Holy shit! Even the concept of how it's produced is nuts. The extra links are even better, including the better-than-oxygen oxidizer that burns sand. The whole collection of anything involving flourine is like "let's see just how many people we can kill and things we can destroy without actually doing it." Whole blog is great along with high quality comments. Thanks for the link and thanks to others for updated links…

Yeah, the chlorine trifluoride is most often the gateway to those articles.

Ended up reading a PDF version of the book, Ignition!, mentioned in that article.

I do wonder if dry wit comes with the profession, btw.

Re: I Tried to Buy an Actual Barrel of Crude Oil

#127

Post by slyall »

oxryly1 wrote: post #122
jallmann wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a recurring nightmare of mine: forgetting to close out a commodity futures contract, then suddenly having 20,000 bushels wheat (or whatever it was) show up on my doorstep one morning. Brrrr.

Ok, in the commodities trading business there have GOT to be stories of this sort of thing happening.

http://thedailywtf.com/articles/Special-Delivery

Edit: Oops, somebody already posted, later in the thread.

Re: I Tried to Buy an Actual Barrel of Crude Oil

#128

Post by mlrtime »

kyleblarson wrote: post #49

I worked at a small quant fund and we once had a bug that caused our roll forward trade to fail on a rather large position of front month WTI contracts. We technically were going to have to take delivery since we were long the contracts at expiry, but our brokerage was nice enough to fix the situation for us.

This is more common than you think, however any larger broker (GS,ML,MS,DB) will gladly take your position for a large fee. You will pay handsomely for their service.

Re: I Tried to Buy an Actual Barrel of Crude Oil

#129

Post by BuildTheRobots »

Luc wrote: post #110
BuildTheRobots wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The friends I play Urb-X with are hyper aware that it's the heavier-than-air gasses that pool and that kill you. I find it amazing and depressing they didn't have any sort of safety gear or air monitoring. In the UK, I'm sure this would have breached both working at height and enclosed spaces working regulations. Even if we're exploring something as pathetic as an old ROC bunker only _one_ of us (usually me) goes dow…

I've thought about getting a used H2S detector on eBay, but ideally you'd want to test and calibrate them, and there's the rub.

I've looked into it in the past and keep looking at atleast a £500 cost -usually more if you want O2, CO, CO2, H25 (I think those were the ones I decided I was interested in).... and _then_ there's the certification cost, so I really can't justify it (though I'd love to).

My friends dad used to be a safety inspector duwnt' pit in the 70's and he's been trying to convince me to get an old Davy Lamp and to just pay attention to what the flame is doing, but I've yet to find a nice one (or inherit his). I have been known to ignite my cigarette lighter on every other rung when going down a ladder but in hindsight, that has the potential to end extremely badly.

Re: I Tried to Buy an Actual Barrel of Crude Oil

#130

Post by jpatokal »

morgante wrote: post #48
strictnein wrote: post #10

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

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%.

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.
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