OS-Tan Fanfic: The Tragedy of Windows XP

[Aurora Borealis]

I've been reading your whole story, and it is great! ;019

It is sad yet very witty, imagery and descriptions are effective, the metaphors and visual puns are awesome touches! (my favorite: the pet GRUBS and the sea monkeys!) ;010

IMO, the highlights in your story are the 'deranged ME-tan' arc, and Puppy-can's introduction! (wow, that girl is a minimalist to the extreme!)

I'm still giggling over the scene where Puppy-chan thought that XP-tan and Ubuntu-tan were homeless! XD

[Techno the fox]

*Pops back into existance.*

Wow...Great story, Grant_p. Though I've only gotten the oppertunity to read the first chapter, I'm already loving it.

Keep up the awesome work. ^_^

[grant_p]

Thanks, all!  Sooner or later, I will feature my version of Vista (Thanks to C-Chan for help with the colors in GIMP).


"Hi, I'm Ubuntu, nice to meet-"

"You will be assimilated."

"Ignore her."  XP sighed, "She's always like that."

[Bella]

Poor Nejin-san and his puppy promblems...and hey, Techo-san! I thought you disappeared (I should be one to talk, though)!

But onto topic...oh wow...you are such a talented writer, for sure the best fan-ficker (that doesn't sound right) that OSC has seen to date! You seem to hit the character's attitudes right on (I've always thought of Ubuntu-san as a very caring, sweet individual, and as Puppy-chan being a bit quirky). I love your use of puns and injokes, and how the Linuxes actually have pet Grubs and Pidgins. And Foxes XD

Of course, the story has revolved around two of my favorite modern OS-tans, XP and Ubuntu-sama, so I've been interested from day one. But the inclusion of Puppy-chan will only increase awesome levels, I'm sure (The first distro I ever used was Puppy Linux, and Puppy-chan was a character I designed)!

Sorry I can't say more right now...I'm a bit beat X___X

[C-Chan]

Yo Grant-san.  ^^

Well,... you've been waiting around the longest for replies, so I'll start with you tonight.  -v-

Stand by...  ^^

*starts typing*

Added after 1 hours 34 minutes:

C-CHAN'S PUPPY-CHAN STORY DISSECTION AND FAWNING
================================================

The System Goes To The Dogs

Got to hand it to you,... your title hits it where it counts.  ^__~

Admittedly, I've had a LOT of problems. Hard drive crashes, three lightning strikes, several systems just conking out. But from my old Coleco Adam to my Dell Inspirion, I've always managed to have SOMETHING on hand that would do the job.

Just letting you know, Aurora-hime will be happy to hear about your prior ownersghip of a Coleco Adam.  ^^

XP closed her external HD, having finally got everything packed properly, and started dragging the oversized case across the street to Ubuntu's place.

“I've got to get one of those things with wheels...or get the user to just spring for a wireless network, whatever...” XP muttered, hauling her HD up to the front door to ring the bell.

Owning a small 2.5" Lacie external HD, I guess that would be equivalent to those on wheels.  Then again, it does require the use of TWO USb cords (one for connection, the other for power) -- a factor I've come to discover is a real PITA.  ^^;

She jumped back as a lot of barking sounded off, and what looked like a somewhat slippery couch cushion popped out of the pet door. At least, it sort of looked like a cushion, the hard looking part at the front of the soft area opened up to bark at her again, extending several different mouthparts at the time.

YES!  The Grub returns!  ^v^
I missed its absence in Chapter 2.  ^.^

I'm guess that last phrase should end as "at the same time", although I'm still wondering if there's a more appropriate term for a grub's mouthparts.  I was thinking "mandibles" but biologically-speaking they're very different things.  

“It's me, you slimey-whoops.” XP said, moving away from the insectoid creature as the front door opened to show another girl, smiling in a way that suggested she'd taken something that would eventually lead to withdrawal. Ubuntu had been unusually giddy that day. It would have gotten on XP's nerves except that she'd had these sorts of days herself and could well understand it.

You might consider adjusting the phrase to "It's me, you slimey- Whoops!".  Concatenated together, "slimey-whoops" sounds like a single word.

Love the isinuation that Ubuntu-san is perpetually high -- clearly to XP-san, the antics of Charity Girl seem possible only after the intake of various... unprescribed pharmaceuticals.  ^^;

“2-gig! 2-Gig! Ubuntu sang happily, bouncing out the front door of her new mobile home, nearly running right into XP. “OH! Hi! Sorry, I was going too fast and wasn't paying attention-GRUB! Stop that!” Ubuntu snatched up the pillow-shaped creature that was now moving towards XP's shoe with slobbery intent.

Same thing with that first phrase -- but here, you just have to separate "attention-" from "GRUB" and you're gravy.  ^^

WOW!  So you gave that brand new computer to Ubuntu-san instead?  @v@
I'm very happy to hear that!  Although admittedly,... I found the news unexpected.  Don't get me wrong -- you've already more than proven to be a very open-minded and resourceful individual.  But that being said, I still wasn't sure if Ubuntu had proven itself to be worthy of your most powerful machine, one of the last to come with preinstalled XP.  'v'

It should be enough to get you started...the user had a lot of useful old appliances in the other place, did you want those too?”

“No...to be honest, I never understood your packing formats unless I had a LOT of wine first...”

“I don't understand yours at all, so I can relate.”

Bwahaha!!  ^v^
That reminds me of back in the day when I discovered I could install my beloved Irfanview in Xubuntu.  It seemed like the happiest day in my life when i saw that red roadkill mascot on the Xubuntu desktop, opening and closing as if it were on any old Windows system.  ^___^

Course, I've long since learned to live without it... ^^

XP had been helping Ubuntu move from the really old house down the road to a nice, new mobile laptop that the user had won in a contest. Ubuntu had been elated. For the first time, she had two full gig of memory, and more storage space then she knew what to do with. The user had been very happy with her performance in several crisis over the past few years, and had given it to her as a reward. The problem had arisen when the user wanted to put on some music and Ubuntu had no idea where it was.

Ah!  That would explain it.  That's very nice of you -- and in fact, my same reasoning for giving Puppy-chan that old Compaq I recently refurbished (speaking of which, I'm sending it off to a family in need tomorrow!).  ^v^

Two gigs of RAM isn't entirely wasted on Ubuntu, since she is a bit more resource-heavy than her other siblings.  Plus the extra RAM and space might allow her to become a virtualizing powerhouse (or a dedicated torrent machine).  ^___^

XP had come to the rescue, packing copies of all her stuff up and taking it to the new place, figuring that while they were not really in the same family at all, Ubuntu had helped her out of some jams several times and she could finally give something back to the annoyingly helpful girl.

Despite my own admitted biases, one of the things I definitely appreciate about your fanfics is your balanced approach.  Humanizing XP-san and making her willing to help out Ubuntu-san (and giving her adorable nicknames) does a lot more to further the cause of FOSS than just regular old mud-slinging.

“You've been a huge amount of help in this. I don't think I've ever seen you do like that, it's sort of scary...” Ubuntu told the Windows-girl, who was shooing a Pidgin off the shelf so she could put up the texts she was pulling out of the case.

Hmm,... from what you told me earlier, the paragraph does seem to be one of those that don't read quite right.  '__'

Here's my attempt at a revision:

Code Select Expand

"You've been a huge help with this.  I don't think I've ever seen you this energetic,... it's sort of scary..." Ubuntu told the Windows-girl, who was shooing a opidgin off the shelf while pulling text files out of the case.

“Well, ME sort of went...around the bend...when our father quit talking to her. He's sort of prone to doting on the youngest, you know, so when I was born, ME lost a lot. And now, Vista's running around and making a general nuisance of herself. Father's ok, so far, but I'm afraid that it might happen to me too...”

“Oh, don't talk like that. You have lots of fans!”

“Yeah, but I think most of my fans are in the geek community, I'm wondering if the only reason my father's still talking to me is that he's afraid a lot of my ex-boyfriends will hunt him down if he doesn't...Ah, well, no one should complain about what color their life preserver is, I guess...”

Well I'll rinse and repeat my comments about XP-san here too -- it's very sweet to see her so introspective.  Especially given that the OEM deadline has come and gone, with additional XP termination deadlines looming in the coming months/years, those thoughts would certainly bear on XP's mind.  

And I can certainly see what you mean by the majority of fans being geeks.  While gamers might pride themselves as being a flagship Windows group, the reality is that they may only control 5% of the userbase at any given time.  The overwhelming majority of XP licenses around the world are sold to businesses for work computers, which (unless you count annoyingly-entrenched IT managers) generally have no real loyalty to any system so long as it gets the job done with minimal disruption to the status quo.

Diversity in the Linux family was usually seen as a healthy thing, even if a few of them refused to hang up the phone and drive.

I'm guessing that last part is a phrase of some kind, huh...  ''

“Yeah...maybe.” XP wasn't entirely convinced. Sure, it seemed to work for Ubuntu, but she also had about a billion godparents who thought it was their job to take care of her and her siblings, as well as a lack of stalkers. XP thought she had almost as many crazy stalkers after her as she had fans, and it wasn't a good feeling, one of the reasons she locked her house at night.. “Hey, wait a minute, if you're here, are you still taking care of the old place, or what?”

Fufu... I take it the stalkers are malware writers and malicious hackers, no?  ^_____^

XP looked in the HD, and shrugged. It couldn't hurt to meet more of the Linux family, really. Maybe she could pick up a few tips to impress her admirers. “While we've got all this, you want to swing by and see if she needs anything? Since we've already got it packed, we might as well save ourselves another trip.”

I see what you mean about picking up tips.  Even something as seemingly unrelated as using the command line in Ubuntu makes it infinitely easier to navigate the command prompt in XP.  That, and of course picking up some invaluable FOSS applications that are conveniently cross-platform.  ^__^

Also, it appeared that the driver must have been very short. There was a booster seat in the driver's side, the airbag had been removed, and all the equipment for operating the disk had been crammed in close to the seat to make what almost looked like an enclosed cockpit within the disk.

“Maybe she didn't get enough RAM as a child...” Ubuntu suggested. “Let's ring the-the....erm...”

BWAHAHA!!  ^V^
Not sure if you truly appreciate just how well you detailed the kind of imagery we were brainstorming earlier.  This is fantastic stuff.  ^___^

“I thought so...I saw her pull in. Her disk is right outside!” Ubuntu whispered back. “What do you think we should do?”

“Why are you asking me?!”

“You're the one with all the security training!”

“I don't know netbeans about security! I have alarms on all my windows and doors BECAUSE I don't know anything about it!”

“Then what did you learn about in Redmond?!”

“Um...modeling...copyright law...eyecandy lessons...more copyright law...”

Still haven't found anymore awkward dialogue, FYI.  ^^
Very cute detail to have Ubuntu think of XP-san as a kind of security guru, considering her obsession with Antivirus programs and firewalls.  Never occurred to her that it wasn't necessarily in the good sense.  ^^;

The copyright law bit was genius.  ^___^

BTW, just as an aside, it might help the imagery if anything they whisper is italicized.  ^.^

*keeps typing*

Added after 1 hours 4 minutes:

XP jumped back as Ubuntu pulled out a six-foot steel tipped spear, and leveled it.

“What the heck is that?!”

“An Asagi! A girl shouldn't go out without protection...here, let me turn it on.”

XD

Glad you didn't forget that spears figure quite heavily in Linuxen folklore.  ^.^
BTW, what's an Asagi?

“No, it was here when I got here, I thought it belonged to ME, so I just left it in case she needed-”

Guess that first "here" should be "there", no?  ^^

Both girls stared at the door as an explosion of barking went off behind the door, and the pet flap opened to reveal-”

Probably best to end that as "reveal..."

“A grub!” Ubuntu and XP both yelled, one with delight, the other with loathing.

“Why do you think those things are pets?!” XP griped, as the grub continued to yap at them, then spit something that began to dissolve what was left of ME's boot.

XD

BTW, didn't realize the Grubs were acid spitters.
Not sure why Puppy-chan didn't move ME-chan's boots outta there -- given the disparity in size, she probably used them as water waders.  ^___^'

Both paused, though, as the grub went silent...and the barking continued. The pet flap swung, but whatever tried to get through it seemed to be slightly too large. It backed off, they heard a distinct “Ow...” then the door swung open.

WAI!!!!!!! The Puppy-chan appears!  And makes quite the appropriate entrance!  ^_____^

Thanks to a little Grant-san magic, you've turned a relatively obscure distro/character into the next STAR!  ^v^

Her father, a long time back, had decided that his daughters odd ability to wind up in a lot of trouble no matter how many times he bailed them out might be due to a problem of loyalty to the family. She'd heard that to help this he'd started using brainwashing. She didn't believe that, despite sometimes waking up with a splitting headache thinking there was some sort of Genuine Advantage to it all. The fact that Vista's last CAT scan had shown up with an implant in her brain didn't really seem to prove anything either. But it was true that her father had tried once to use genetic engineering to instill loyalty by fusing dog DNA with one of her older sisters. Windows NT had definitely been an oddball.

The girl in front of them, despite having some similarity to Ubuntu, seemed to show that the Linux community was not as far above such experiments themselves as they'd claimed.

So true, so true,... unless it's a Shiba puppy, in which case fat chance getting any blind loyalty out of her.  ^___________^;

Aside from the impeccable reference to Genuine Advantage and Vista-san's... secrets... I appreciate the reference to InuT.  A little something to remind the readers that the characters are not reimagined -- they're still the characters we know and love, but with fleshier details.  ^____^

The girl before them was very, VERY short, only coming up to their waists, but seemed healthy enough. She certainly moved very quickly, running circles around both of them in the cramped space of the small house, seeming to go over every detail, then, trying to shove her face right up to XP's (being forced to stand on tiptoe to do it and still failing, XP took a step back to avoid an embarrassing situation) she sniffed rapidly, shook her head (causing her longer-then normal ears to flap) and finally spoke:

By what I said originally about sniffing, I meant XP-san's.... backend.... You know, like the dog way of saying "hello". XD

Still, the breast idea isn't bad -- certainly very appropriate to XP-tan's character.  ^^'

The paragraph, even before the latest changes, also doesn't read quite right.  Here's my proposition:

Code Select Expand


The girl before them was very, VERY short, barely coming up to their waists, but seemed healthy enough. She certainly moved very quickly, running circles around both of them in the cramped space of the small house, seeming to pour over every detail.  

She then tried to shove her face right up towards XP's, being forced to stand on tiptoes to do so but failing to even reach the base of XP's chest (less so after XP stepped back quickly, trying to avoid an embarrassing situation).  The young girl sniffed rapidly, shook her head in a characteristically-canine manner (causing her equally-canine ears to flap vigorously) and finally spoke:

Ubuntu's mouth was open. Her asagi was hanging at her side, it seemed that self defense wasn't occurring to her right now. XP tried to fill in the gap.

“No...we're inside. YOU'RE in the walk-in closet...”

It's pretty clear by now that Ubuntu-san is out of her element.  When it comes to dealing with nutcases and generally insanity, XP-san is a seasoned veteran.  ^^;

XP could have sworn that the ribbon hanging off the back of the bow on her skirt wagged briefly.

Speaking of wag, I haven't seen any mention of Puppy-chan's tail yet.  This is as close as I got.  ^___^'

“Wait...that's not a guest room! That's an old ice chest! When I heard something move in it I thought it had rats!” XP protested, but the dog-girl had already turned around and threw open the door.

XD

Rising star, I'm telling you!  I mean when you can write a convincing story about a little puppy girl who lives in a FREAKIN ICE BOX,... you know you're stumbling on something BIG here!

Puppy had modified the closet beyond all possible recognition. It had been subdivided into many smaller rooms, almost a miniature house that her own small stature seemed to be made to treat as normal-sized. XP and Ubuntu, trying to squeeze in and largely failing, wound up taking turns looking at it all.

I'm guessing that last sentence should end with "looking inside".

This is actually the part from our brainstorming sessions I remember the most: the subdivided closet.  As a really young kid, I used to like making my miniature "house" underneath the dining room table, using sofa cushions for walls and room subdivisions, and various items for furniture.  So I can definitely relate to the pint-size Puppy-chan's antics in this.  

It seemed to have everything that one could want, but all crammed into the tiny space. A pidgin much like XP or Ubuntu's was sitting on a shelf asleep. Puppy poked at it till it woke up, handed it a message, and threw it out a window that she'd cut in the wall leading to the outside. XP could see, from her wedged-in-the-door view, a small pile of RAM chips, looking like they were unpacked from some luggage. This observation would have been confirmed by Ubuntu, as she could see Puppy's backpack, but as she was stuck on the other side of XP facing the opposite direction, she never saw the chips.

The use of animal personifcations as, of coure, one of the strongest traits to your fanfiction.  The image of the young girl walking up a flight of miniature stairs, entering one of her "rooms" on her "second floor", poking her pidgin, and then tossing it out one of her "windows",...

Well to put it one way, I've never laughed harder before!  

However, I don't understand the part about the RAM chips, since they're never mentioned again.

Both girls finally, with considerable effort and exhalation, got themselves out of the door to collapse outside. Puppy had reacted with delight at the site of the case and, without asking, began to carefully take things out one at a time to place on the floor of the oddly blank house.

I'm very impressed by how hard you tried [and succeeded] in capturing the youthful, impulsive and pure personality of Puppy-chan, since she's not only a young girl but also,... a lovable, adorable PUPPY!  And like all puppies, she's not adverse to tearing things up without asking.  

“Thank you so much for bringing these over! I wasn't sure if I'd have them all if the user needed them, and I have so much closet space...this place is HUGE! I'm not sure what I'm going to do with it all, I won't even have to take Grub outside to walk him, he has so much play area.”

Might be a good time to chime in that my Compaq's whooping 10GB hard drive is a veritable mansion for my MacPup install. ^^;

“No...why would I want to do that? I'll just live in the house. Um...if you don't have any place to go, you can live in my closet till the economy gets better if you want...” Puppy said, looking worriedly at XP and Ubuntu. XP suddenly realized that the girl thought they were both homeless.

XD

Rising star!  Remember that!  

Puppy perked up. “I have all this closet space, I was thinking about getting a fox, but I wasn't sure if I can take care of it yet or not, but don't worry, I think I have a pet that can carry lots of messages, all at once! I grew tons of them just in case!”

Usually lightweight distros are chastised for offering firefox, since it's so top-heavy compared to the distribution in general.  No where is this more evident than in Damn Small Linux.  ^^'

BTW, the fox reference definitely conjures up images of the memorable Chapter 1.  ^__^

“SEAMONKEYS!” Puppy said happily, shoving the jar towards Ubuntu triumphantly.

*latches onto Puppy-chan, without any intention of letting go*

MINE!!!!!!!  ALL MINE!!!!!!!  IF YOU WANT TO SHARE IN THIS ADORABLE MOUND OF CUTE, YOU GOTTA PAYZ ME A TOLL!!!!!!!!!  XD

“She's nuts.” Ubuntu said bluntly. “Happy, though.”

Kinda funny that a Linux girl would call another Linux girl "nuts".  But then Ubuntu-san IS a corporate-based Linux girl.  She, along with SUSE, Mandriva, Red Hat and Xandros, tend to be a lot more down to earth and image-conscious.  ^^

No surprise at all that she and XP-san would become really close friends -- despite everything, they have more in common than they realize.  ^___^

Both girls suddenly screamed as a boomerang whizzed by their heads, followed by a high pitched barking. XP turned to see Puppy standing on her front porch. She didn't look quite right, now...in fact, her eyes were glazing a bit. A second boomerang she was preparing to hurl was dropped to the ground, as she went to all fours and sprang.

WOOHOO!!  I was wondering when the Australian references would slip in.  Was quietly hoping to hear Puppy-chan talk with a slight accent -- but admittedly, that would've taken a lot of research into avoiding obvious cliches (e.g., "G'day Mate"). ^____^

Thanks to this scene, the boomerang is now Puppy-chan's official weapon of choice [and that's final].  Just seems to suit her.  ^^

The last phrase might sound better as follows:  "as she lept down on all fours and sprang towards them".  

“I TOLD YOU THAT HOUSE WAS CURSED!” XP screamed, she and Ubuntu breaking into a full run as Puppy snarled and took off after them, biting at their heels.

Fufu!  Now THAT'S an ending!  ^v^

Might be a good time to brush up on our Dingo facts... ^__^

http://www.cracked.com/article_15853_6-cutest-animals-that-can-still-destroy-you.html

Puppy Linux was AMAZING! I'd never got this sort of performance out of my 2-gig XP machine, much less expected it out of something with only 350 MB of RAM. I quickly sent a thank-you note to the OS-TAN board for the suggestion, and went back to playing with it.

Shameless plug, shameless C-chan plug. ^___________^

But yes, I'm happy you're happy!  ^v^

Thanks, all! Sooner or later, I will feature my version of Vista (Thanks to C-Chan for help with the colors in GIMP).

Holy crap, I had nearly forgotten about that picture!  Does bring back memories. ^__________^

"Hi, I'm Ubuntu, nice to meet-"

"You will be assimilated."

"Ignore her." XP sighed, "She's always like that."

I take it Vista treats Wubi like some kind of plague that must be purged or at least vaccinated against.  ^^;

And hey -- a Techno fox sighting.  Hopefully it's a precursor for more to come. `v'

=======================================================

In closing, I have a hard time believing that you had inspiration problems with this story.  Perhaps I'm just being shallow, but it seemed remarkable -- and upon rereading it, I can't find very much at all that needs to be changed.  My only conclusion is that your standards are too high -- this is the kind of stuff that's more than good enough for us, and I'm very happy you took the time to write and share it with us.  Thank you!  ^v^

And don't forget,... Rising Star!!!!!!!!! ^0^

*ponders what a Vista-Puppy meeting would look like*

========================================================

Oh, and I think I'll call it a night here.  Dont' worry Bella-hime/Aurora-hime, I'll stop by with some replies and some artwork tomorrow.  ^___^

[grant_p]

Thank you for another great breakdown!  I'll start fixing!

RE:  some of the comments...
I think we have the same external HD, it takes two USB's at once, too.  Though it did give me an idea, I chained my 4 gig and 2 gig USB drives together to plug in at once, stacked, thus saving money on a new one!

The new computer, by the way, is going multi-boot, though none of the OS's know it yet!  I'm also trying to get a wireless network going.  It still has XP, but by the time I'm done it'll have quite a bit more, too!

I hope the family likes the new computer!  I've actually found that one of the biggest advantages with open-source is that when I copy it and give it away, I'm a 'distributer', not a 'pirate'.  It helps a lot, both with my classes and my own students (I teach) as I can get them some needed programs, especially office stuff, that some may not otherwise be able to get.  Plus I use the Ubuntu and Puppy disks to salvage disk-error problems...

I've never used Wubi, though.  I guess I need to give it a try!

I am probably the worst FOSS advocate ever, though, as I tend to see computers as tools, and like a wrench, hammer, gun, or car, there's no 'perfect' solution for everyone.  Each person will have their preferences.  I like both Ubuntu and XP depending on what I need to do.  Same for Word and OpenOffice, or IE and Firefox.

XP in this story now realizes she's a potential target, and ME only brings it to the front, so she's realized she's on borrowed time (and hardware).
The 'hang up the phone and drive' was reference some of the new linux smartphones that can easily crash a car if you're not careful (who in their right mind IM's from pidgin from behind a wheel?!)

If it was JUST the malware writers stalking her XP would be on easy street.  She also has the unlicensed crackers, the spyware-infested knockoffs, and the highly questionable Linux XP which has a mixed success rate at best.

An Asagi, by the way, is a traditional Zulu weapon, I thought the south african connection was too good to pass up, given Mr. Shuttleworth's homeland even though he's British-based now.

Grubs HAVE to be acid spitters, otherwise they'd not wipe out whatever boot-records they come across (and I don't think that anything was left of ME's boot sector, I just wanted to make a mess.)

I actually didn't think about what part Puppy would be trying to get to, I just figured XP would not want to stick around for it.  I hadn't even considered breasts in it...yikes.

XP just got SP3 too, which I've noticed hasn't helped her at all in the memory requirements.

Ubuntu usually has a higher order of users to deal with, so despite a less predictable platform, she does deal with things in a more predictable way (such as pre-tested repositories).  I thought XP would handle the unknown better as she tends to have a lot of experience with very poorly planned software installs from people doing who-knows-what in the internet.  Not that it actually helps her much, but still...

And the ribbon WAS a tail, XP didn't recognize it.  I guess I should clarify that.

The RAM chips were just a snack Puppy was having, she hasn't even started on most of the house's supplies (assuming she's even found them).


Oh, and reference Vista's reaction to Puppy, if I get to Vista:

-Vista's head felt like it was splitting open.  She thunked down on her bed to stare at the ceiling.  
“Why does it keep bothering me?!  I didn't even install anything new!  I listened to approved music only!  I didn't-”
She sat bolt upright as a thudding was heard from under the bed.
“Do you mind?!”  Puppy yelled from underneath, “Some of us are trying to sleep!  Blasted upstairs neighbors...”