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It'll all be fine, amigo. Just take whatever useful productive information you can and apply it where you can. If we all had the same information/experience/background etc, there would never be a need to ask questions. Everything in your situation worked out OK. Think about what happened and what you can learn from it and apply it going forward.

Please keep asking questions on the forum, since all questions are indeed relevant. If you have a question, chances are someone else may be wondering the same thing as well. Or its something they have not considered before. That's certainly happened to me. Opinions, even divergent ones, are valuable and give us a chance to expand our own knowledge. If you're not comfortable posting on the public side, you can always PM someone.

Based on your original post, I would say that you are certainly not out looking for trouble. You just found yourself in a potentially bad situation. It happens. Hindsight is 20/20. You lived (and so did everyone else,) you learned, and now you can carry on.

Keep the eyes and ears open, keep up the good work, and just do the best you can.

De-escalation on your buddies part was good. Keep them at ease and don't give them a reason to get violent. I would have had the cell phone in hand with 9-1 dialed waiting for the other shoe to drop, though. Your buddy could have asked them to leave. They weren't actually invited in, were they? All kinds of potential for major nastiness.

Glad everything turned out OK. Definitely think about looking more closely at some of these peoples' behavior and see if you have cause for concern in any other people you know.

Don't worry about "looks". They can be the most deceiving thing of all. A preacher and a killer both look like people. Outward appearance means nothing, its behavior, demeanor, etc. that can give you clues. Continue to be alert and carry more ammo!