A little while ago there was a bank robbery here in Spring Hill at the Regions Bank. This police helicopter has been circling overhead for quite some time. The local schools are on lockdown. Hope they catch the bad guy soon. Meanwhile I’m glad I have my Kimber at my side.

Shenanigans like this are rare around here, but I guess all it takes is one bank and one idiot.

Update 3:56pm: They haven’t caught the robber yet. From the Daily Herald:

“Officers are seeking an older model white pickup truck with a dark blue stripe down the side. The driver was a white male with sandy hair, wearing black clothing and a black hat. He has a tattoo that covers most of one arm, radio reports said.”

Here’s a link to the Daily Herald article.

Here’s a link to another article about the robbery in The Tennesseean.

Update 5:23pm: This is apparently Spring Hill’s first bank robbery. The Tennessean has another article describing the reaction of the bank’s customers who stopped by the bank afterward and didn’t realize what had happened.

Update 8/14: The Tennessean has an update on the ongoing hunt for the suspect, Marshall Popple.

One year ago yesterday we arrived on the island of Kauai. When we got to our condo in Princeville it was dark outside, but this sight greeted us early the next morning. From our porch we could see beyond the cliffs to the ocean. The air smelled so clean, with just a hint of tropical flowers. A light rain was alternating with sunshine. This rainbow lasted for about 10 minutes as the palm trees waved slowly in the breeze. There were little doves landing on our railing making cooing sounds while obviously waiting for a handout and Hawaiian geese nosing around on the lawn below. It was about as relaxing as it could possibly be.

Adding to the slightly surreal vibe were a young casually dressed Asian couple pacing back and forth on the lawn in some kind of enigmatic ritual. They would begin about 50 feet apart and would then walk very slowly past each other looking straight ahead as if in some kind of trance before turning around again. They did this each morning for the next several days.

We went to our dear friend Teasi’s birthday party yesterday and had a great time. At the end of the party Teasi wanted all her girlfriends together for a group photo. This is what ensued when the birthday girl suggested that she do the picture with her eyelids turned inside out. Eeeeewwww!

Pardon me?

I kept watching. It turns out they were discussing a remark that Barack Obama’s new pastor (or somebody like that) had said about Hillary Clinton. I still didn’t get it… I scanned every word now, transfixed by the conversation, hoping I could piece it together before they went onto something else.

Then I got it… Hillary was being accused of being a WHITE SUPREMACIST!

Funny, but not anywhere near as funny as being a White Pressroom Cyst. I always knew Ms. Clinton had a dark side.

I’ve had the privilege of working on e-Sword LIVE for about the last eighteen months. It’s a web application version of Rick Meyer’s e-Sword Bible software. The original e-Sword is a standalone Windows program that is by all accounts the most popular Bible study software in the world, with over 7 million downloads worldwide.

Rick wanted to create a version that could be used on the web by anyone and from anywhere. He headed up the project and I built the system from scratch using the MooTools javascript framework and the usual suspects PHP, MySQL and Smarty templates. There’s a wide variety of different Bibles, Commentaries, Dictionaries and other cross reference tools available, all tied together by some nice technology that makes it easy to use and navigate.

You can type in a reference like “John 3:16″ or search for words or phrases. If you want to link to a specific passage from your own site you can do so like this:

http://live.e-sword.net/app/?bibleref=1ki_19:11

Check it out here and let me know what you think.There’s a default Bible and Commentary, but lots more are available once you register.

Soon we’ll have it shortened and you’ll be able to omit the “/app” part of the URL. Oh wait… I guess that means it isn’t finished after all!

I took the family to the Tennessee Renaissance Festival last Sunday and we had a great time. Watching a couple of knights jousting, eating a giant turkey leg and shouting ARRRRGH! at the top of my lungs was just what I needed. More musings coming soon… probably.

Some cretin decided to hack my server using a publicized Wordpress exploit. Even though they succeeded in messing things up a bit the damage wasn’t too severe. Plus, it was probably time to upgrade Wordpress and renew my commitment to paranoid security policies anyway…

If you’re curious, you can read about the exploit the attackers used here and here.

Here’s two pictures taken within an hour of each other. It hasn’t decided whether to be winter or spring around here, so we’re getting both at the same time. Sledding, snowball fights and flowers… A perfect combo for a Saturday in March.