Towed

This morning I discovered that somebody had parked in front of my garage, blocking me in:

I had no idea who it was, but it appeared to be a female from the contents of the car.

I gave the person a couple of hours to move the car before eventually calling the towing company:

The tow truck driver said that this is a common sort of thing. Usually it's somebody who is drunk out of their minds and is unaware of where they are parking during the night. The next morning must be doubly bad for them - they have a hangover and their car is missing .

The funny thing was that the tow truck guy just walked up to the car, hopped in, put it in neutral and pushed it up to the tow truck. I didn't even think to check if it was unlocked - I could have just pushed it into an empty parking spot myself.

Bird Poo Smell

A little more than a week ago I noticed a bad smell in my apartment, but I couldn't figure out where it was coming from. It was a vaguely familiar smell, but wasn't any of the typical things you'd easily recognize (like rotting food or mold).

Then one day I noticed a duct vent outside my apartment and realized what it was:

Some birds had been building a nest inside the duct and were pooping up a storm inside, so much that it spilled out, down my window. The duct connected to my clothes dryer as well as the oven fan vent.

Unfortunately this vent outlet is between the second and third floors, so it's impossible to reach without an extra-tall ladder. I called the maintenance crew and they were able to pull the bird nest out (there were no baby birds or eggs, luckily), and put a grate over it.

I think the birds must have pooped a whole lot inside of the duct (which didn't get cleaned up), because there's still a small lingering smell wafting through the apartment a week later. I'm hoping that the smell will eventually go away by itself, but in the meantime I have one of those plug-in air fresheners, which masks it so that you don't notice.

Dryer Vent

The dryer vent on the roof of the apartment across the way from mine has been spewing out this weird looking red stuff all morning:

I wonder what they put through the wash?

0 Day Delivery

The most amazing thing happened today: I ordered some stuff on Amazon this morning, and it was delivered before I got home. I was completely stunned and surprised, because I submitted my order with the standard 2 day shipping and didn't see anything about same-day delivery. I was also surprised that the package was just outside my door and they didn't deliver it to the apartment office in order to get a signature.

The package was shipped by some company I've never heard of, called Dynamex. I can't find anything about this on Amazon's website. I'm curious about whether this is a new standard, or if it is some sort of beta program being tested in select areas? What's going on here?

This is a big step that could really impact how I use Amazon. Typically, it feels like I get the desire to have a new book or toy on Saturday or Sunday afternoon, at which point I have to decide how much I really need whatever it is. If it's urgent, then I usually have to go to Borders, because if I order it on Amazon, it won't be shipped until Monday, and if I'm lucky it will be delivered on Wednesday, but it'll get delivered to the apartment office which will be closed when I get home, so I'll only be able to pick it up on Thursday morning on the way to work. With this same-day delivery, that huge wait time is almost eliminated (of course they probably wouldn't deliver on weekends, but still).

Here's a picture of my October 13th order, actually in my hands on October 13th. The weird thing is that I had already looked through all the toy stores in suburban Seattle trying to find a Rubik's cube (apparently there's a "Rubik's Liquidity Crisis" going on, because they were all out). I had resigned myself to ordering it on Amazon and waiting a week, yet here it is and I have it on the same day. Wow.

Grossly under-billed

For a while now I've been wondering why I only have to pay $1-2 per month for water. I thought it might have had something to do with all the rain that Seattle gets (lots of extra water, or something).

A letter came today which cleared it up:

I'm wondering how something like this even happens. How can you not notice that your revenue is ten times less than normal for an entire year? Granted, the error probably only happened in one apartment complex out of many, but still..