PAFOA Update, and a thanks.

[danp]

Howdy All,

I'm sure some of you have noticed that I have not been around as much in the past month or two as I have always been. As you all know PAFOA is something I do as a hobby in my spare time between my career, my personal life, and everything else we all have to do in our daily lives.

With that said I wanted to let everyone know I'm still here, and I'm still doing everything I possibly can to keep things going strong. My job (as a web developer) has been pretty out of control lately because a few of our programmers moved on to pursue other careers and much of their work has fallen in my lap so I am working some pretty crazy hours trying to get all of our projects done which leaves me pretty exhausted at the end of the day with not much time to work on the programming for the website.

So I wanted to just do two things:

Apologize for dropping the ball a bit on responding to emails, getting things updated, posting information, and launching new features that I have been working on.

But more importantly I wanted to say thanks to everyone! I am constantly amazed by the number of people that visit this site and the information everyone provides. Everyone here has done a wonderful job of keeping this forum friendly and full of information. If I had a nickel for every time someone has told me that they learned more here than anywhere else I would have a lot of nickels and that's because of all of you taking the time out of your lives to help answer people's questions.

I also wanted to say thank you to everyone who has ever donated to the forum or bought t-shirts.

Lastly I want to say thank you to all the guys that have been organizing unofficial group shoots both on the eastern and western part of the state. I was lucky enough to go to the one that ChamberedRound organized at Wicen's 2 weekends ago and had a wonderful time. I still hope I can get to one out at PMSC eventually! These kinds of activities are one of the big things I always hoped would come out of this forum: People getting together, sharing their hobby, meeting new people, and generally having more fun with the sport we all love.

Thanks again, and I hope you guys understand that I'm still here, and still doing everything in my power whenever I have free time to keep moving the organization forward. I have a lot of stuff planned and I'll get it up and running as soon as I possibly can!

[lvfcfirefighter]

Hey, we can all understand where your coming from. Your career pays your bills and you need to take care of that first and foremost. How else would you be able to afford all those guns and pizza! I will also say that I'm one of those guys that has learned a ton from this site. I would like to thank you, Dan P, for your dedication to get this site going and keeping it running. Thanks

[Emptymag]

Dan,
I want to say nice things about you and the forum, but I can't.

At least, not NOW!
Gotta get moving, have to go meet about 50 people I never would have met without this forum!
Group Shoot Six! Oh, yeah!

[JIMMYC308]

Thanks to you and all your efforts the PAFOA does a great service for us all. Hope to see you again at Eastern shoot #2!!

[Emptymag]

Originally Posted by Emptymag

Dan,
I want to say nice things about you and the forum, but I can't.

At least, not NOW!
Gotta get moving, have to go meet about 50 people I never would have met without this forum!
Group Shoot Six! Oh, yeah!

Kinda weird quoting myself, but...

Dan, I still want to say nice things, but I need to go download about 80 photos of today's group shoot!

There were SIXTY THREE shooters today! (63)
Without this forum, it would have been just ME shooting all by myself. (LONLEYmag)

Thanks Dan!

[GRoPA]

Thanks to you Dan for this forum and all of your efforts.

I would have been shooting beside LonelyMag and never even known him or any of the other great people who post on here and/or come to the Group Shoots.

Todd

[Emptymag]

Originally Posted by GUNRUNNERS OF PA

Thanks to you Dan for this forum and all of your efforts.

I would have been shooting beside LonelyMag and never even known him or any of the other great people who post on here and/or come to the Group Shoots.

Todd

You know what? I thought the same thing!
Todd and I both belong to the same sportsmen's club, but I'm willing to bet that even if we happened to be on the range at the same time before meeting through this forum, any exchange would have likely been limited to a friendly hello and little more.
Our club has roughly 1,000 members and I have to say that I've made friends with more of them HERE than I ever have on the range or at the club meetings.

What does THAT tell you Dan?
Ya dunn a good thing here, my friend!

[RocketFoot]

Thanks for all your efforts, Dan! I agree with GRoPA...My guns usually stay locked up in the safe because I didn't have anyone to shoot with...but now, with the help of your forum, I discovered tons of people to shoot with, at least once per month! People that all share the same interests as me! Thanks again, Dan!!

[dnar]

danp,

Thank you for the update, it was indeed very thoughtful of you.

I can't tell you how many people came up to me and asked about you as if I've known you for many years. They said a lot of positive things about the Pafoa and about you too, and several of them didn't realize that you were as tall as you are.

The people of Western PA were so friendly and accommodating it just amazed me. It was almost like being in another world, lol! Words cannot describe how much they love the shooting sport/firearms, and sooo many of them told me that they started shooting at a very young age which just blew me away.

Well don't get too stressed out with your work and if it's possible try to take it easy.

Take care,

rand

[soberbyker]

In case you missed it Dan, Rand and myself went out west to represent the east at their PAFOA Group Shoot #6, it was a great time, a day or so before the trip out I had posted the following, which included a big thank you to you.

Bill

Originally Posted by Soberbyker

I've been told you guys out west think everything east of Harrisburg is part of Philadelphia, being a stickler for details I'll point out neither Randy or myself live in Philly, although I work and do most of my indoor range shooting there and I do live on the outskirts of Philly in Delaware County, but Rand lives in Reading, Berks County pretty far from Philly. I'll be jumping off the turnpike at the Reading exit to pick him up, I get on the turnpike at Valley Forge.

Way way back when, I can remember I used to get excited about the first day of school. I'd get all jittery with anticipation of seeing new people and doing new things. (That didn't last long). I've been getting that old time feeling about this shoot, Although I'll meet a couple of you guys tomorrow night, in two days and I'll be meeting new people and doing new things.

I've never done any kind of shooting other than stationary paper targets, unless you count those fake guns at carnivals. I'm looking forward to, and hopefully not embarrassing myself, to shooting the star. The video someone posted of that looked fun. I've only owned a gun since February 2007. Back in the early 80's I worked for a security company and I shot lots of guns back then as part of a special nuclear contingency strike force. But between then and Feb. of 2007 I may have shot a revolver two or three times that a buddy had.

I'm a so-so shot, I've met folks on this forum who are awesome shots. The other day I went to SPAG in south Philly, met another new forum friend, vetter3006, he's a good shot, let me try his Bushmaster, I love how you get that little puff of smoke up your nose as you shoot. The was a guy there who I think was a Philly cop, t-shirt but uniform pants, he pulled in a silhouette target and it had a smiley face shot in it's head. I wish I could afford the training, and ammo, it takes to be that good.

For now though, I'm just having fun, shooting, meeting new people and doing new things. I think it's cool how many different "types" of people I have met from this forum. People, who without this forum, I would most likely never had contact with. People like the ones in Kyle's book Armed America (Armed America Documentary Video up on YouTube), from all walks of life. I've made a few friends here on the forum, yes EM, even I have friends, and it's been a great experience.

Thanks Dan & Doug, this is a good thing you guys started here, on many levels, comradery, fun, important information, legal points of view, the list goes on.

Thanks to the forum members who have helped me in all kinds of ways, from beings friends, to helping me learn more about this sport, to helping me understand my rights and so much more.

I'd even like to thank the occasional idiot that wanders through here for keeping me grateful. I can learn from everyone, even if the lesson learned is what not to be like.

Thanks for helping me to feel like that little kid again.

Yea, I'm excited about Sunday, and I'd thought I'd thank you guys now,


.... who knows how you'll feel about me on Monday, hehehe.

Soberbyker aka Byker aka Bill