They are indeed. Looked high and low for identification of them about 1 month ago. Since then, the entire insides of the house have been plagued with them... dozens and dozens of them. Weirdly my neighbors aren't affected... but the outside of my house is rather disgusting with them crawling all over.

We have bazillions of them in the yard here in the Hawthorne Neighborhood. The worst thing about them is that they live inside in the winter and the are like dumb flying M&M's running in to everything and everyone. They don't really stink much in my experience - and I kill them all.

PJB: In all liklihood (presuming you are here in the PNW) you are not seeing stink bugs. What we do have here which looks similar to the stink bug is the Box Elder Bug. Box Elder Bugs cause concern in the autumn when they gather in considerable numbers on the warm outside walls of homes and sometimes find their way into houses looking for a suitable place to over winter.

Dean... oh no, it's definitely the brown marmorated stink bug. I eventually took close-up photos of it and sent it to a "bug Web site" who identified it as such.

I called Oregon Department of Ag yesterday and they said that they have been receiving a lot of reports about them, and there's nothing that can be done.

Fortunately, they appear to have dissipated some over the past few days. The mistake, it turned out, was having one of those window air conditioning units not tightly sealed.

PJB - Damn! I hate it when I am wrong!

My back yard free range urban chickens love them!

It's not good. They're not "harmless" exotic pests, alas. Damage fruit crops. Few, if any predators here.

http://entomology.oregonstate.edu/sites/default/files/brown_Marmorated_Stink_Bug.pdf

http://www.oregon.gov/ODA/PLANT/docs/pdf/ippm_halyomorpha_alert_09.pdf?ga=t

Where's Ant-Man when you need him?

Finally, you have identified this bug that I've found inside and outside. Thanks!

Box elder bugs look nothing like stink bugs. They are bigger, shaped differently and are black with reddish-orange markings. We had a lot of them in Minnesota...some years they were worse than others. Don't see 'em as much out here.