Michael T. O'Brien

Michael (Mike) Terence O'Brien was born 16 May, 1949 in Washington, Pennsylvania in 1949, an only child, to his parents John and Pat, and passed away age 75, at home in Venice, California, 4 May 2025, after a long illness. His grandfather had run the O'Brien Steel Construction Company; his father was a civil engineer who ran his own consulting company until joining O'Brien Steel Construction.

Mike received his B.S. from the University of Michigan with a double major in Chemistry and Physics. In his senior year he began dating Sarah Shaw, whom he eventually married. The two moved to the University of Illinois at Chicago Circle for graduate school around 1973. First during and then after leaving graduate studies, Mike worked as a research assistant helping to run the first Plato IV remote site. He later changed departments to Information Engineering, where he became an expert in the Unix operating system (Research Version 5).

Disliking the Chicago winters, Mike, who had first visited Southern California in 1962 and found it pleasant, moved with Sarah to Los Angeles to take a job offer from the Rand Corporation in 1978. He soon bought a house in Venice. His marriage to Sarah ended not long after, but the two remained on good terms and Sarah stayed in the house as caretaker when Mike moved to Boston for a little over a year to work at BBN Labs, Inc. on the CSNET project.

Mike founded and ran the first nationwide UNIX Users Group Software Distribution Center. After 10 years working as a researcher for the Rand Corporation, he put in 25 years at The Aerospace Corporation, where he was known for his deft coding, deep patience, wisdom, humor, and approachability. Mike became the local Unix and networking guru. He helped prototype and integrate diverse software expert systems (especially in Smalltalk) and, later, virtual worlds and simulations. He helped build VEHICLES, one of the first massive space system design environments. Colleagues and friends remember him giving them books ("reading assignments") and recommending TV shows ("viewing assignments"). They also remember him as being always up for a challenge, enthusiastic about taking on difficult or groundbreaking projects.

In the 1980s and 1990s, Mike penned a nationally popular column, first for the CSNET Forum and later for Sun/Expert magazine, "Ask Mr. Protocol," where he explained technical topics with the tagline "Mr. Protocol is glad you asked." It was notable for its humor, clarity, and lack of pretentiousness, as well as for the bio: "Mr. Protocol refuses to divulge his qualifications and may, in fact, have none whatsoever."

One of Mike's favorite post-retirement projects was rewriting the famed Rand Editor for the Macintosh computer, which he then made available to all.

Mike had many hobbies and interests. It was in 2001 at the Celtic Arts Center, while taking a class in Irish Gaelic, that he met and, charmed by her dimples and laugh, fell in love with Jennifer Michaud, a costumer for the television and film industry, whom he married in 2019. (Mike eventually went on to teach Irish Gaelic!)

Mike considered one of the major formative experiences of his life a six-month travel trailer trip he took with his parents around the continental U.S. He particularly fell in love with Yellowstone National Park. Childhood visits to his Aunt Mamie fostered a similar love for Arizona and the Sonoran Desert. His passion for Yellowstone led him to visit on many occasions over several decades; Mike was proud to be a part of the "geyser gazer" community. In the 1980s, he worked with Yellowstone geologist Rick Hutchinson to collect GPS data to better map the precise positions of hydrothermic features in the park. He was one of a select number of individuals to travel across the spectacular Grand Prismatic Spring on one of Rick's specially designed boats. He always stayed at the historic Old Faithful Inn, and never tired of its beautiful wood lobby nor the views over the Upper Geyser Basin.

An enthusiastic and knowledgeable amateur Egyptologist, he would startle friends when visiting museums by reading and accurately translating the hieroglyphics on many a sarcophagus. Exposed to the text-based adventure/social environment of MUDs in the early 1990s, Mike quickly developed an embedded puzzle-based adventure that would teach the player phrases in ancient Egyptian - one of the early uses of text-based computer games in instruction.

Long an adept practitioner of photography and videography, Mike employed one of the first consumer-grade Steadicams to shoot video of his strolls through Yellowstone's geyser basins. In his retirement, on garden and neighborhood walks with his wife Jen, he enjoyed using his latest camera acquisitions to shoot stunning close-up digital photos of flowers and cacti.

Mike was a licensed ham radio operator (KC6OJW), active in the LA area HAMS club and the Cactus Intertie System and an Assistant Director for the AARL Southwest Division.

A certified SCUBA diver, Mike was fond of doing boat dives off the California coast and traveling to the tropics to dive. He played a fierce game of laser tag, collected hand-carved wizard staffs, reveled in an authentic British pub, Chinese and Moroccan food. He studied the harp and enjoyed noodling on electronic synthesizers. Mike also loved Ren Faires, making chocolate chip and M'n'M cookies, and soaking in hot tubs in Desert Hot Springs.

Mike was a great reader whose "best and true favorite" was Jane Austen. A longtime fantasy and science fiction fan, Mike was particularly fond of Jack Vance, Alexei Panshin's Anthony Villiers novels, and Gene Wolfe's Book of the New Sun: his license plate for many decades read AUTARCH (IYKYK!). Delighted with Richard Roberts' book Please Don't Tell My Parents I'm A Supervillain, Mike, in his inimitable way, introduced himself and became an alpha reader for Roberts' future books. Roberts named a superhero in one of his books "Mister Protocol" in tribute to Mike.

Jen and Mike enjoyed travelling together, perambulating through Yellowstone; England, Ireland and Scotland, where Jen enjoyed the stone circles and Mike took copious photographs; and Italy, where they loved getting lost in Venice, always able to find their way back to the center of town. Jen remembers his storytelling, his brilliance with technology, the way he could always fix problems with her computer and phone, taking in movies together and going out to eat. Mike loved attending wrap parties and studio events with Jen; he liked to brag to friends and family about her latest show.

An only child, Mike reveled in the company of his many cousins, and was as proud of their achievements as if they had been siblings. When he needed a kidney transplant, his cousin Mary donated her kidney to someone in the UCLA chain, meaning that Mike was able to get a match from another donor and enjoy another six years of life.

Mike was a beloved friend, colleague and companion. His delighted laughter will remain in many folks' memories.

Donations in Mike's memory may be made to:

The Celtic Arts Center, North Hollywood http://www.celticartscenter.com/Main.htm

The Geyser Observation and Study Association https://gosa.org/donate/