Same As It Ever Was

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I upgraded to Parallels 9.0 yesterday when it was announced and have been starting up each of my virtual machines to allow the newest version of Parallels Tools to install in them. Windows 7 and XP both upgraded fine, as did my CentOS linux VM… unfortunately my Windows 8.1 image wouldn’t start with the error above: “PAGE FAULT IN NONPAGED AREA”. Okay — I guess I will search the internet for a clue about exactly what that means.

Yes, Microsoft’s famous “blue screen of death” is no longer a darker blue, it’s now sky blue with the classy (and very business-like) emoticon for a frown. Reminds me of the “Sad Mac” icon from a couple of decades ago:

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The Rescheduled Craft Lager Festival

The Craft Lager Festival was scheduled for last Saturday (10 August) but was postponed after a flash flood and mudslide destroyed the event equipment. The rescheduled event was held today in Colorado Springs at the Norris-Penrose Events Center instead of Memorial Park in Manitou Springs. As expected, many of the vendors, especially those from out-of-state, were not able to attend the rescheduled event today. There were not many of the local Colorado Springs breweries in attendance, either. Since I was alone today I had to wrangle the dogs, navigate the crowd AND taste the beverages. Because I was wrangling and drinking I didn’t have many chances for photos. I have included a few here though.

It was hot in Colorado Springs today. Even waiting in line to enter the event the dogs were panting.
In line for the Craft Lager Festival

After one circuit through all of the vendors I sat down in some shade with the girls and poured a bowl of water for them.

Taking a break

Note the wonderful winged skull tattoo on somebody’s calf in the background. No one ever said Colorado Springs was classy.
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The volunteers pouring beers were a bit overwhelmed and many of the booths opened a few minutes late for various reasons, and some of those pouring (whether volunteers or staff from the breweries) were not really into the event. Kudos to Lost Rhino Brewing from Virginia, though! They were friendly and appeared to be happy to share their beer.

I will say my favorite beer today was Crooked Stave’s Surrette.

The swag haul was pretty meager this year, too.
Today's swag

The dogs and I had a good time and many young ladies stopped to pet Lucy while they asked how she lost her leg… so there’s that, I guess.

Making lemonade

This past Saturday I had tickets to attend the Craft Lager Festival in Manitou Springs. I enjoyed the festival last year and it’s one of the few fests that allow dogs. Unfortunately this year there was a massive mudslide and flood the evening before the festival that covered the park in mud and damaged all of the event equipment, so the festival has been rescheduled for this Saturday the 17th of August.
Instead of visiting the festival I decided to take the dogs on a road trip to Clear Creek at Lawson, just about an hour west of Denver on I-70. They played in the water and Fabi swam her heart out, crashing over the groomed rapids while Lucy just hung out being mellow. She did get in the water several times but she is smart enough to know the current and rapids were a bit too much for her swim skill level. She laid on the large rocks in the sun and watched Fabi spaz out.

I just found out that dogs will be allowed at the rescheduled festival this weekend so we’ll head down there Saturday!

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Lucy versus the wet pigeon

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We returned from our evening walk to find a stunned and wet pigeon on the front porch. Lucy was more curious than Fabi. She will chase any creature that moves quickly, so lucky for the flying rat it was not doing that.

Three Possibilities

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There are at least three possibilities for what tore a hole in the screen on my back door last evening:

3. Squirrel
2. A wayward bird that did not see the screen during the big rainstorm we had
1. An intruder (person) planning on foul play/robbery

Hopefully it was one of the first two.