TITLE: Disconcerted by a Bank Transaction
AUTHOR: Eugene Wallingford
DATE: May 01, 2023  4:21 PM
DESC: 
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BODY:
 I'm not sure what to think of the fact that my bank says it
 received my money NaN years ago:

 <center>
 <a href="https://mastodon.social/@wallingf/110288217245414686">
    <img src="http://www.cs.uni.edu/~wallingf/blog-images/computing/nan-years-ago.jpg"
         alt="screen capture from my bank's web site, showing that my transaction was received NaN years ago"
         width="400"
         align="center" /></a>
 </center>

 At least NaN hasn't show up as my account balance yet!  I
 suppose that if it were the result of an overflow, at least
 I'd know what it's like to be fabulously wealthy.

 (For my non-technical readers,
 <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NaN">
    NaN</a>
 stands for "Not a Number", and is used in computing interpreted
 as a value that is not defined or not representable.  You may
 be able to imagine why seeing this in a bank transaction would
 be disconcerting to a programmer!)
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