Kelly and I were in our office a few minutes ago (20:25-ish) when the apartment went "thud, shake, thud, shake, shake." I'm guessing it was a minor earthquake, but, as of 20:37, I can't find any information about recent seismic activity in the vicinity.
It might have been our downstairs neighbors going at it, but I'm thinking not.
UPDATE: Yes, it was an earthquake. Preliminary reports peg it at 3.7 and centered about 8 miles northeast of Fremont.
UPDATE 2: Make that about 9 miles northeast of Fremont.
Posted by Kurt Wall at 20:32 2009-10-13 | Trackbacks (0) | Comments (0)
Cockroaches are Gross (Fremont)
As I wrote a week ago, I noticed some roaches as we moved into KurtWerks West, v2.0. I thought they were a fluke. Not so much… I smashed one that was on the hallway wall and washed another down the drain in my shower. Kelly was up all night one night after one casually (or brazenly) sauntered across the ledge of her keyboard drawer whilst she was typing.
Clearly, this wasn't going to work. After I wrote a polite but firm email message to the apartment management and Kelly wrote a similar message to the manager and followed it up with a personal visit to the management office, a pest control service came out Friday morning. The upshot was that we (mostly Kelly, actually, because I'm at work most of the time) had to unpack the pantry and the cabinets in the kitchen and bathrooms so the exterminator could do an inspection and set out food and poison.
He used two types of agents, one that interferes with their gestation and one that kills them outright, but only after they've had a chance to take the food back to their posse. It seems to be working. Whereas before we we seeing live roaches, the few we are seeing now are dead. That's the only kind of roach I'm interested in seeing.
Have I mentioned that moving is the work of Satan?
Posted by Kurt Wall at 22:41 2009-03-29 | Trackbacks (0) | Comments (0)
KurtWerks West, Volume 2 (Fremont)
Or, KurtWerks, the Fremont Edition.
Kelly and I moved from San Jose to Fremont yesterday. We wanted to find a place that was less expensive, larger (if possible), and quieter. San Jose's Japantown neighborhood is pretty, but our apartment there was terribly noisy. Between the street traffic, the twenty-somethings coming home hammered from the bar at 2:00 a.m., and sirens, we couldn't take it anymore. After about six weeks of apartment shopping, we found a three bedroom apartment in Fremont (on Fremont Boulevard, no less) that is much quieter (except for the children) had more space (particularly a room we could dedicate to office), and that was less expensive. Welcome to Pathfinder Village. The name sounds like a retirement home, psychiatric hospital, or treatment center. It isn't quite as nice as our old place (older, mostly) but for over $400 less per month, I can deal with it.
I'll post pictures of the move and the apartment this evening.
So far, the only downside has been the 4 roaches we saw coming up out of the disposal. I believe they were a fluke. There must have been food or something equally yummy (to cockroaches) left in the disposal because after running water down the drain and running the disposal, I haven't seen any more. If this continues, though, there's going to be trouble. I can tolerate a lot of things, but not roaches.
Posted by Kurt Wall at 09:59 2009-03-22 | Trackbacks (0) | Comments (0)