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Vacation and Fur Fright  XML
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Dragoniade
Ancient Wyrm
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Joined: 02/09/2008 21:03:21
Messages: 131
Location: Longueuil
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I'm back from vacation. Already all gone and back to work.


I left Friday in the early morning to take the plane that would fly my north for hunting. I meet my mom and we drop to the work camp when we packed the boat.
The next day, I met my hunting partner and headed to the reservoir to head to our mirador, 20 km by boat, while my father and mother were hunting in their mirador.
We were supposed to stay there until Wednesday, as both my mother and partner were heading back to work on Thursday, but due to the bad weather, we decided to head back Tuesday. For the 3 days we stayed, it was all wind and rains.
There were quite a few wind waves on the reservoir, but the boat was sure able to take it.

I took Wednesday easy, as my father needed to catch up at work. I took the day to work a bit on the site, working on the future search engine and adding another import feature to help me with the updates.

On Thursday morning, my father and I headed back to his mirador that he lefts the day earlier. The silence was great, disturbed only by the sound of Canadian gooses honking while flying south, beaver swimming and duck running on the water.
However, it was sometime disturbed by the sound of machinery, loaders and dumping truck, working a few kilometers away on the road leading to the work camp. With the mountain and flat valley, the sounds were really amplified and it was like they were working right next to us.

On Friday, my father when down to the ground to call, while I hold guard upstairs. At 10h00, he climbed back and we were sort of loosing hope, as the working sound was really loud and were really disturbing the peace. My father decided to take a nap, while I pulled my laptop to resume my work on the search engine, raising my head every minute or so to keep watch.
It's at 12h30 that I raised my head to look outside I saw it. A small buck walking along the other side of the stream. With all the noise, one came out. I notified my father, who got up as I was grabbing my riffle and my clips. We both got outside and as my father was aiming the moose and I was readying myself to assist him, I saw it... Another moose left the branches to follow the first one. And it was another male. I look at my father, saying there was another one and acknowledging with him about getting both. We nodded at each other and while he was aiming the first one, I aimed at the second one.
We both shot at the same time. His fell at the first shot, mine didn't move an inch. I shot 2 other time before he finally decided to walk away back into the bush. I was shocked. 3 bullets and it did nothing. But knew I hit him.

We waited an hour, watching in case the first one would get up and in case we would spot the second one, before crossing the stream. The first one was down, not having moved an inch, so we proceeded to find mine. There was blood, so I did hit him. We first went into the high folliage and saw nothing. While my father decided to walk further, I went back to where I last saw the moose, then started to track the blood on the ground and foliage. Red on green is not easy to spot, but after about 30 feet through the foliage, I saw it. I did get it, and quite good. All shot went in, where they should, but he was one of those that wouldn't fell no matter what. We started to prepare the nooses for transportation, which means eviscerate them then cut them in quarters. During the process, my partner arrived, having been notified we hit, and two hours later, our expedition's partners. We loaded the ATV and headed back to the main camp to hangs the quarters. All done, we headed back to the work camp for the night.

On Saturday, we started washing the stuff and packing, planning to head south on Sunday.

On Sunday, we got up at 5 AM, ate breakfast and started the drive back to our maple grove, a nice 1400 Km trip .

http://maps.google.ca/maps?f=d&source=embed&saddr=Unknown+road&daddr=45.621722,-72.108765+to:Rang+St+-+Thomas&hl=en&geocode=FWIAIgMdMD9t-w%3B%3BFfXrvgIdjGHH-w&mra=dme&mrcr=0&mrsp=1&sz=8&via=1&sll=44.762337,-71.987915&sspn=2.683424,8.453979&ie=UTF8&ll=44.762337,-71.982422&spn=7.488536,14.0625&z=6

We stopped at Amos to register the kills. About halfway through the regional park, we were flagged by the forest patrol to stop. Seem they were waiting for us and we figured out it was because we registered 2 kills at the same spot, same time, same day, which is rather suspicious in other circumstance. After checking all the papers and asking a few questions, they asked my to come inside for questioning, same for my father. They questioned me further, asking more details about how the hunt occurred. After a 15 minutes interrogation, one of the ranger left and I waited with the other one. They came back, saying all was OK, and we left a few minutes later. What they were after was if my father was the one who shot both moose, which is illegal. But since we both fired at our target, we were all ok. We resumed the road trip and arrived at Longueuil close to 20h30 or so. My parents drop me home, since I needed to pick my car, while they continued toward my sister's home, to stop for the night.

On Monday, I resumed my trip, heading to Sherbrooke needing to buy some food for processing during the second week of 'vacation'. However, my father called, saying he lefts my mother at the hospital, a puncture she did during the road trip got infected. My father continued to stop to the butcher to drop the moose while I was heading to the hospital and waited for my mother. She got her leave late the day, after which we headed to the maple grove.

Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, Friday were mostly spent cooking the food I brought back and use some of last year moose to make room for this year meat. So we made Moose spaghetti sauce, Moose Shepard pie, Moose Meat Balls, Moose Stew. We also unpacked. Sadly, it rained most of the week, so we didn't managed to get too much done on the land as we would have hoped. I took the opportunity to work on the updates I brought with me during that week.

My parent left on Sunday, while I took the day to work on another project of mine. You see, I have more than 14000 favorites on Deviant Art, most having never been saved, having been more of an online collection... which I hate. I never been a fan of WEB 2.0, where everything is online and should something happen to the online site, you lose everything. So I finally managed to figured out how DA worked their AJAX, through searching left and right, and got started in coding a crawler. This small program query Deviant Art for a user's favorites, mine in that case, recovering the data in XML with all the information for the picture. All that is left to do is download the URL supplied and voila. A structured local archive of my favorite, sorted by artist and title, which I can use for wallpaper, or view OFFLINE without having to be connected to DA.


I spend the remaining days working on this, my updated and getting some wood in for the winter, before heading back to Longueuil and getting ready for Fur Fright. I took the opportunity to get an extra sketchbook, and a 5x8 labels set, which I used to add a cover to my sketchbook. Sadly, I'll have to figure a way to make the laser toner stick on that paper much longer. I think I'll have to use that spray I saw some artist use on their paper, if I can manage find what it is.

On Thursday, I left to Fur Fright after picking Chasseur d'étoile for co-riding there. We got to the overflow hotel by 22h30, then headed to the convention hotel to see if we could register. Since everything was closed, we headed back to the hotel and went to sleep.

On Friday, we registered and we went our separate way for the con. I wandered into the dealer's dungeons for a while, leaving my sketchbooks at a few tables, before heading to the werewolf panel. I think this was the only interesting panel this year and I sure wish I had brought my laptop, since there as been a long transformation talk I also meet Comus and we talked. He's quite a friendly guy to met and I was sure surprised, in a good way, when I first saw him. I also meet Sorethumb and ICheetah at the con. I was supposed to pick a box at the con from someone who owed me some stuff, one of which was a 160$ charity commission. Of course, the box never got there, the person never having sent it thinking I wouldn't be at the con, while at the same time, being unable to spend 4 dollars for an envelope with a 200$ insurance to send me my commission, which I sure now regret taking, charity or not.

I spent the rest of Friday and most of Saturday wandering between commissioning in the dealer's dungeon, meeting with Comus or Sorethumb groups and the charity event, which I got the DVD of the Howling I went with Comus to the Gun Fur panel, thinking, by the description, it would be a informative panel about weapon, like C-Ace used to have. Sadly, it was another propaganda, brain dead gathering of weapon crazy United Statians who saw conspiracies in every corner and would be ready to go Rambo should someone ask them to drop their weapon. Like you need to carry a gun to go to the grocery or walk in the street. Some people are just so paranoia. While I understand and enjoy shooting at range, like they do, I cannot understand the religion about keeping a gun on yourself 24/24 and feeling threatened every second. Go figure.

On Sunday, we gave our goodbye and we parted, until another year. I got home at 02h30, having stopped to Cabela's to grab an order for our hunting gear and reload.

While this Fur Fright was interesting in term of meeting people, I must say I was a bit disappointing by the organization. First, when you have to rely that much on overflow hotel that are more than a street corner, it's a sign you've outgrown yourself. Sure, that hotel is quite nice, with the indoor atrium, but when you have to commute between both hotel, it's a realy fun killer, especially when you're tired and need to rest a bit. Second, the programming was to be improved. Last year panels were fun. This years, it could have been better. Too much fur suiting panels or USA propaganda panels (gun, military, dog soldiers, etc) and not enough general panels. Hopefully, next years will have better panel.

Another sore moment was when I showed my sketchbooks to a friend. His first reaction was to ask me that question: "How many gifts do you have in there?". Which, of course, was a big ZERO. All were commission, none were gifts. Which he replied "This really suck. You deserve more." Yes. I think so too. I spent the week before updating daily, pushing a big update. What feedback do I get? None, Niet, Aucun. I see people pushing quarterly updates getting much more feedback, more support, more gifts arts, but when I do one over time, nothing. Why do people writing crappy TF story manage to get requests done by the dozen, and I have to work in the shadow? Why do people say I deserve more and still get nothing. That sure is depressing when it come to updating the site and give back to the community. Especially when I'm told I should be happy I make people 'happy', but the other way around sure isn't important. And it's not to help when you hit the 10th anniversary mark, only to be cast aside by another 10th anniversary, which seem was more worth of mention in a TF blog.

At least, with commission, I can expect to get something back to myself.


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kylejhall2
Hatchling

Joined: 16/02/2009 11:39:42
Messages: 11
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It sounds like you had some fun while you were up Canada. It would take me about 12 hours to get there from where I live. I been to Maine but never Canada. It also looks like you had a lot of fun hunting even though you said it was raining for some of the days you were there. I am excited since you did some work to the site and there's going to be a search engine to help find clips easier on the site. I also think you had a lot of fun at the Furry Con meeting people, comparing art and commisions, and other fun things which doesn't sound that bad to me. In general it sounds like you had a fun time while you were away on vacay. I'm just wondering if you can post your web link to DeviantArt so I can see some of you work/favorites.
Dragoniade
Ancient Wyrm
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Joined: 02/09/2008 21:03:21
Messages: 131
Location: Longueuil
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kylejhall2 wrote:I'm just wondering if you can post your web link to DeviantArt so I can see some of you work/favorites.


http://dragoniade.deviantart.com/
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