I’d like to take a moment to thank some club members who have recently volunteered time to the club.

I know you all appreciate Mark Dahmke. Mark has managed the audio/visual capabilities of PAC and Hyde for as long as I’ve been involved with the organizations. He always knows the right technology to recommend to meet our needs. He recently oversaw another AV update at Hyde by installing a new Blu-Ray player.

Mark worked with the team that developed the new website, recommended a transition strategy from the former site to the new site and installed the new site on the servers. You may not be aware, but Mark’s company, Information Analytics, donates server space and bandwidth to PAC and Hyde for our websites.

I regret being out of town for the BBQ social! From experience I know that the food was wonderful. That pork wasn’t purchased from Famous Daves (I’m sure it was much better!) It was cooked by Bob Kacvinsky and Dave Churilla. If you don’t know, to make pork that good you have to prepare the pork butt and slow cook it at the right temperature for hours. You have to constantly watch the temperature, making sure it’s never too hot and you have to monitor the wood to assure that there is plenty of smoke. The result is the fall off the bone, smokey meat that doesn’t need a lot of extra BBQ sauce. Bob and Dave sat by their smoker for all of those hours last Saturday so the club could enjoy the meal you had last Tuesday.

Jim Kvasnicka worked with his church to provide the tables we used last Tuesday. Jim puts in very long days with his job, yet whenever PAC or Hyde needs someone to do something, Jim is always one of the first to volunteer. After Jim’s long day at work, he went to get the tables and chairs and worked to set them up. After the meal was over, Jim was there cleaning up and packing up the tables to return them to his church.

I know there were others who helped with the meal this year. I appreciate all of the work that went into it. It wouldn’t have happened without Bob, Dave and Jim.

And finally we need to thank Ben Rush and Jason Noelle for all of their work on the new website. I greatly appreciate them because building the new site wasn’t something that I asked to be done. They wanted to put the time into it and they made it happen. I liked how they included Mark and Jack in the planning and transition. The site they’ve built for us uses WordPress which is a state of the art content management system that makes updates easy and has a plethora of plugins that makes enhancements easy.

Even though WordPress was used, Jason and Ben spent hours working on this. They and Mark spent a lot of time transitioning content from the former site. It turned out very well and it gives PAC a professional web presence.

I appreciate Ben and Jason’s initiative in wanting to do this project and their dedication to get it done.

We all owe Mark, Bob, Dave, Jim, Ben and Jason a special word of thanks for the extra time they donated to PAC and Hyde in recent weeks. The next time you see them, please shake their hand and let them know their work is appreciated.

Dan