We hit the trail last weekend for an overnight backpacking trip in the Blue Ridge Mountains. The whole family went and I'm proud to say that the 4-year old hiked the entire 7 mile loop (minus maybe five minutes on my shoulders, ouch). Although, with day two being almost entirely uphill (and at times pretty steep) I'm not sure I'll get him to do it again anytime soon.

For anyone interested in the trail, here's a map of the area. We did the top-down hike by starting on the Blue Ridge Parkway and heading down the Cornelius Creek drainage and returning on the Apple Orchard Falls trail. We camped at the site near the lower parking lot and, although it's very close to the lot ,we didn't actually see anyone until the morning.

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When working with forms in ASP.NET MVC, particularly with the Ajax.BeginForm helper method, it is often useful to display some sort of indication to the user describing the success or failure of the operation. Actually, this is typically the case with all Ajax workflows since there are no page refreshes.

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ArcGIS Online has retired it's existing cached demographic services in favor of a new service which requires an AGOL subscription and will consume credits. The new service is not cached into separate demographic variables (e.g. Med Household Income) but it does contain all the information needed to recreate/render the same maps through the use of LayerDrawingOptions and dynamic layers. I had a need to consume this new service and thought I'd share a sample that might help someone else.

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New Tradition

I really do have a great wife and some of the best friends a guy could ever have. Bringing in my college buddies to surprise me for my birthday was an amazing and thoughtful gesture and we're going to have to do this every year now. Less crowds and college football (yay for the epic win) make this the perfect time to come back.

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Just hanging out on a Saturday with some tractors, rope swings, and zip lines. 

He did get upset at the end of the ride but only because they didn't let go of him sooner.