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Mitch Mitchell, the last surviving member of legendary 1960s band The Jimi Hendrix Experience, was found dead Wednesday in a hotel room in Portland,Oregon at the age of 62. Mitchell, the perfect counterpoint to Hendrix’s amazing and unique guitar style performed with Hendrix throughout Hendrix’s career including the notable Woodstock performance in 1969. In a statement on the official Jimi Hendrix website it was reported that he died of natural causes.

Janie Hendrix, stepsister of the late Jimi Hendrix as well as CEO of Experience Hendrix said.

“We’re all devastated to hear of Mitch’s passing, He was a wonderful man, a brilliant musician and a true friend. His role in shaping the sound of the Jimi Hendrix Experience cannot be underestimated.”

Mitchell had just finished his last US tour date in Portland with Experience Hendrix and was taking a 4 day vacation.

When I was a high school student I first discovered Hendrix and his music really moved me. I learned to play drums playing along with Mitch. You’ll be missed, it’s a shame that I missed seeing you perform again. Seeing you play way back in the mid 1990’s was a huge treat to me. While I’m sad you had to go, it’s nice that you got a few days to experience Portland.

The boys in a rare moment of semiquietness.

Well it’s been a strange few weeks since I last posted anything other than my weekly links (sorry about the lack of links last week (and this odd habit of alliteration as well)). Anyways, since I last wrote anything I’ve: gotten to spend more time with my family which is a great thing. Been laid off from my job as a network engineer (I’d name the company but they don’t need the search engine bump and I only advertise products I truly believe in. On top of that my father went back in to have a tumor removed (same spot as 5 years ago).

In the short term I’ve decided to return to my roots a bit and focus more on building my portfolio up a bit more and taking a few classes to bone up on my all around skillset as a network engineer and also as a web developer.

What’s coming up in my personal future:

• The soon to be unveiled new project
• The soon to be fully launched “Portland Dreams” site
• A resurgence in my participation in the Portland Tech Community (add my absence as another failing of my former employer. How can you possibly be a vibrant tech organization when 95% of the rest of the tech community has never heard of you?)
• More baby pictures than you can possibly shake a stick at. (why in the hell would you be shaking a stick at pictures of my babies? They’re awesome and cute. Plus the littlest one’s drool is a proven cure for dryness)
• Massive note taking and rehearsal to give a decent couple of panels at Wordcamp next month. This will be my return to the world of public speaking (for those unaware, it’s been about 12 years since I’ve done anything remotely resembling public speaking). If anyone wants to give me a pair of New Balance sneakers to go with my black turtleneck and jeans that’d be great :D

On the work related side (and as part of a return to my graphic/designer roots):

• The soon to relaunch site for the Percussion line I’m in.
• Wordcamp Portland limited theme
• Launching a photography site for a former coworker from the K. Falls newspaper
• Completion and launch of 3 plugins on the Wordpress.org site.

While not on either list I’ll also be endeavoring to write at least 2-3 posts a week from now on as well as increasing the number of Howto articles as well.

In the last bit of news I also recently switched to Disqus for my commenting needs. For those not in the know this means I have a few new features for my little spot on the web.

Features of the new Disqus Wordpress plugin:

• Comments are indexable by search engines (SEO-friendly)
• Export and import of comments
• Automatic synchronization between Disqus.com and your WordPress comments
• Uses the new Disqus API
• Moderate/administer your blog right from the WordPress admin

Very cool stuff and they even have integrated Seesmic support for video commenting which is just awesomely cool.

Well that’s it for now, I’ve got work to be done and eventually my In-law’s swimming pool to hop into. See you all on the flip side.

Lastly:

• RIP Bernie Mac & Isaac Hayes.
• Major congrats to the Phantom Regiment for winning their 2nd DCI title. This version of Spartacus was amazing and I enjoyed getting to see it twice this summer. Way to go! Hope you guys come west again next year!

So due to that wonderous bit of news from last week Zoe and I are moving again. This time down to beautiful sunny Portland, Oregon.
Today is a major packing day and hopefully sometime tomorrow morning will be the last bit of loading and then we’re done! Woo hoo!

IF you need to get ahold of me I’d recommend calling since as soon as this message is posted the computer will be going offline until it gets set back up in Portland. I’ll be checking my email via my powerbook tonight after the majority of the work is done however.

Lastly, this is what we in the blogging world call a temporary post. Once I’m back online this post will be deleted (no one really says “temporary post” like that. Nor do they say “woo hoo” as much as I seem to on this site).

Catch ya later!