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this morning i sold 100 shares of oracle stock through ameritrade. they announced their quarterly earning at the end of thursday and the news was very good. aftermarket trading ratcheted up the price to $26.50 a share. after taking a look at their recent history, i didn't think the price would jump any higher so i went conservative and put in a sell trigger for that amount. when the market opened in the morning, it seemed like the smart thing to do, as the dow was dipping. but as the day wore on, the price kept on rising until it reached $27.50. i also got my sell order mixed up and ended up getting rid of my share at $26.40 instead. so i lost about $100 in potential profit but i bet conservative. but that's the nature of the stock market, you can't predict what'll happen in the future.

my father forwarded me an e-mail from a spanish astrophysics phd student looking for a place to live. my father doesn't have any vacancies on his end, but thought i might be interested, despite already agreeing to rent out my spare bedroom to a chinese researcher at the end of the month. i decided to renege on my previous agreement, partly because this spanish roommate would be here for 3 months while the chinese roommate would only be here for a few weeks. i sent him some photos but he wanted to check out the place in person before making a final decision. hailing from barcelona, his native language is actually catalan, and he learned spanish through watching television. he seems to be a photo guy as well (film photography no less) so we'll have plenty to talk about. i was wearing my fortaleza t-shirt and he told me he's actually been to ceará before.

my new roommate wouldn't be moving in until wednesday, giving me some time to repaint the bathroom door. originally i was going to take it off its hinges and strip it horizontally in the kitchen, but decided to leave it vertical and strip it that way.

i used citristrip, which worked quite well last year when i stripped the paint off of a few antique mortise locks. i didn't do the whole door, just a few strips. the problem with vertical stripping is the stripping gel would occasionally drip onto the floor. but having the door vertical actually helps with the actual stripping using a putty knife. the first pass i managed to get to a thin but hard white layer. i could see the exposed wood underneath by that point.

the second pass easily sloshed off that final white layer to reveal wood. the wood itself seemed to have been stained at one point. there are some crackling patterns but it's a result of the first painted layer, and not on the actual wood itself (although the pattern did stain into the wood finish).

i realized as soon as i did the first pass that stripping the door was a mistake. it would've been easier to patch up the cracklings and the nail holes and then paint over the whole thing. stripping is much more labor intensive, and it's smelly and messy. even with most of the paint stripped off, i still need to scrub the door with an odorless thinner to get rid of the little sticky curls of softened paint.