Friday will be John Breen's 65th birthday. I'm sure all of you will join me in wishing him a very, very happy birthday. We all have a lot to be grateful for when it comes to his very frequent presence on this board, and for his many years of service (close to 40, I think) on the B31 Mechanical Design committee.

For me, it goes much farther than that. You see, I first met John in November, 1976, when I joined the engineering firm where he was already employed. He taught me this business as a green engineer. He'ss till teaching me things today. He also introduced me to my wife of 26+ years, and was the best man at our wedding. (She wishes him well, too. I'm not quite sure why. You'd think she'd have spent the past 26+ years plotting revenge instead.)

He and I have shared a lot of laughs over the years, frequently at each other's expense. Frequently, also, we've managed to find a not-so-innocent victim and skewer them with repeated barbs from both directions.

John has had a number of interesting experiences over the years. Before he got into this business, he was in the Army, where his job was to disarm and dispose of unexploded WW2 ordnance in West Germany.

Once he mustered out of the Armed Forces, he and a bunch of his childhood friends decided one weekend afternoon to amuse their wives by running around throwing firecrackers at each other while wearing pots and pans on their heads. Presumably, they had consumed considerable alcohol before one or the other of them hit upon this idea. In any case, none of them was seriously hurt during these festivities.

Joh is a very large man. He's about 6'-4" and has a big frame. When the Pittsburgh Steelers were dominating football in the 1970's, John used to hang out with some of them. He was able to use this extracurricular activity to good effect. He was with some business acquaintances when they encountered one of these players (Jack Lambert, who had an on-field persona of extreme intimidation) on a street corner. Without breaking stride, John walked up to Lambert, clapped him on the shoulder, and announced, "Hey, fella, you look like the south end of a northbound horse." All the business acquaintances assumed they were about to see John's last breath, but of course it was not to be.

John also once fell off the top platform of a cat cracker and managed to save his own life by grabbing on to the handrail of a platform a couple of levels down. He dislocated both shoulders in the accident, but of course it could have been much worse.

John has taken more college-level courses than almost any of us, but despite that he has managed to avoid acquiring a degree. I used to tease him that there were no more courses he could take at Pitt without them giving him a diploma in something or other.

But the amount of time he has poured into this topic boggles the mind. He has a collection of every issue of the B31 codes, back to their origin (no, they're not chiseled into stone tablets). He has written and taught a great deal about this subject, including teaching a post-graduate course at the University of Southern California.

At one time, John and his first wife raised prize-winning Maine Coon cats. (If you've never seen a Maine Coon, they are huge. Big ones in show condition can easily exceed 30 pounds.) I'm not sure of the peak paw count, but I think it may have exceeded 50 at one time. John also rescued stray cats during this time frame, including a big black blind cat that could catch flies in midair even with his handicap.

John met his current wife in Austin, Texas, while he was working on the "Incredible Levitating Power Plant" project. They were married some years later, and somehow she decided to move from Texas to Pittsburgh with him, where they currently live in the house John was raised in. So now you know why he mentions both Pittsburgh and Texas in his automated signature on his posts.