This Black Friday crap has gone way over the top.

Last year, I thought I’d get out early and shop some of the bargains to be had on the day after Thanksgiving at the local Fry’s. It did not occur to me that I would not even be able to find a parking spot (at least, not a legal one) anywhere in the same zipcode. This year, I slept in, and I enjoyed that a LOT more.

The reference was to a fellow I know (who will remain nameless), who used a racial slur in a conversation with me. This fellow is actually (mostly) a pretty nice guy, but he does harbor significant racial bias. Of course, no one is a villain in his own eyes.

So, why is that bigotry? Bigotry is generally defined as an intolerance to other racial groups, but I think that bigotry can be explained in much more fundamental terms. Namely, bigotry is the process of making moral judgments which have no moral basis.

Morality, you see, is based on human choices. If the element of choice is not present somewhere, then there is no moral issue. When a person chooses to commit (or not) a crime, that is a moral choice. The aspects of a person about which he or she has no choice are not moral issues. This criterion of choice clarifies what is and what is not bigotry.

As an illustration, nobody gets to choose what color of skin they have, or gender, or the ethnicity of their parents. Therefore, any judgment that a person makes of superiority (or inferiority) of one racial group (or gender, etc.) over another is bigotry, because it is a moral judgment that has no moral basis.

A racial slur is a moral judgement of superiority of your particular race over another; a moral judgement without moral basis; bigotry.

The change that is already having an effect is that after your 2nd renewal, you only have to get a new TR100 every 10 years (you still have to renew and pay the fee, but you only have to take a renewal class every other renewal).

The change that will kick in next year is the extension of the renewal period from 4 years to the current 5 years. I expect renewal classes to shrink substantially for a while after the last of the 4 year licenses come up for renewal, then slowly come back up over a period of several months.

I recall at the last instructor re-certification that there were a lot of grumbles about both of those changes, and speculation that it would reduce the incomes of CHL instructors. So far, I have not found that to be the case, since the surge in new applicants has more than made up for the lack of renewals.

And, fortunately, I don’t do CHL classes for a living.

Terrorists and other criminals prefer ’soft’ targets. Nothing deters violent crime more effectively than the possibility that the intended victim might shoot back.

Nothing.

I installed the updater (that took a few minutes, since it wasn’t completely clear where to put the files), and the rest was relatively painless. It also prompted me for a database update, and an update to my Akismet anti-spam script. When I came back to view what changed, I found a number of interesting new features, which will take me a while to digest…

I also put in some changes to the comment facility. You now have to create an account and sign in before you can post a comment. I will still be hand-moderating all comments, but I’m hoping that task will be much easier and faster now, since there is some chance that the spammers will find it too troublesome to bother posting here. Maybe that will free up some time to write new posts!

OUCH! That means they’ve already busted the 60-day statutory requirement for giving an answer to the application! But it’s not their fault, and it’s not your fault (or my fault). They are simply overwhelmed by the unexpected workload.

I have also heard from some renewal students who have not received their renewal licenses in time. If you are up for renewal DO NOT PUT IT OFF, but get the application and course done as soon as you can.

One other little detail: After 7 years of having a fingerprint reject rate well under 1%, all of a sudden the DPS is rejecting a large portion of my ink-rolled fingerprints.  I am now urging all of my students to take advantage of the $10 digital fingerprinting service offered by the range where I teach. They’ve been pushing everybody to go digital for a while now.

There isn’t a whole lot I can do about it other than hope that our legislature approves some more funding for the horribly under-funded CHL program. In that regard, I don’t have any special pull with the legislature — you might help out by sending a (politely worded) request to your local legislator to please increase the funding for the DPS CHL program.

The next day, however, I got a note from Martin Avis (whose free newsletter, KickStart, is well worth reading, even though he resides in an anti-gun-rights country), along with a similar warning from Lynn Terry (the lady that had recommended the book to me in the first place), warning me of the sneaky play that the e-book seller had pulled. You see, the guy selling the $9.95 e-book had a provision in the sale that you were automatically enrolled in a newsletter subscription to the tune of $29.95/mo, and to opt out, you had to call a phone number. While the notice met the letter of the law, it was carefully crafted to be easy to miss — which I did.

I immediately tracked down the customer service link and demanded that my $29.95/mo ’subscription’ be canceled. In my cancellation demand, I mentioned that I did not like the way that the “forced continuation” was sneaked through.

He did respond with an acknowledgment of my cancellation, along with a condescending letter about how I wrongly accused him of under-handed dealing, and pointed out that his offer ‘clearly’ states that the subscription is optional. Yup, it does now, after he got caught.

In case you are wondering, the name of the e-book is “Adsense Secrets 4″ by Joel Comm. The feedback that I have seen from several sources indicates that since Joel has “mended his ways” (in response to a very acrimonious exchange on his forum), that the e-book is worth buying and reading.

Maybe. I haven’t read it, and I may not ever read it. This sort of tactic leaves a really bad taste in my mouth, even if I am only out ten bucks. To be fair, I really should have seen it coming. First of all, the only method of payment accepted was a credit card — no PayPal or other 3rd-party payment system. Second, the offer was suspiciously “too good” — Joel offered a 100% commission for referrals on the e-book, which obviously means that he was planning to make his money off of the “back end”. I just overlooked the possibility that the “back end” was actually built-in to the original sale. And I totally ignored the fact that my bullshit detector pegged it’s meter when I heard the self-serving tripe about “giving back”.

Despite the 100% commission, I will shy away from recommending the e-book, and I will definitely pass on the ‘affiliate’ program, which smells just a little like a Ponzi scheme (whether it is or not). Note that this blog entry has no links in it. Once burnt, twice shy. And I will be checking my credit card statements very carefully to see whether my ’subscription’ is actually canceled. If you really want the e-book, you have enough information now to Google it, and provide someone else with the commission, if that’s what you want to do. You might even make some money in the ‘affiliate’ program that I’m giving a pass. If you do, you are entitled to consider me a fool, but my conscience is clear, and I sleep well at night.

I will be a lot more careful in the future.

I have experienced much the same phenomenon with my new-applicant CHL classes. I have had 3 classes in a row where I had to turn people away because my class was “full”, only to have 3 or 4 people not show up on the class date with no prior notice. That hurts. The loss of income doesn’t bother me nearly as much as having to turn away students, then finding that I didn’t really have to. I spoke with some other instructors, and they reported a similar problem. One of them now requires a $20 non-refundable deposit to enroll in his class.

I asked some of my students about their opinion on course deposits, and they were generally in favor of requiring a deposit. However, that approach is not problem-free, either. First of all, even though people will say they would be willing to put up a non-refundable deposit, sometimes people will say one thing, and decide another. It’s human nature. Plus, handling and tracking deposits is an additional layer of hassle for everyone concerned, and it’s a barrier to entry that I would prefer not to put on my students. I want the signup process to be simple and hassle-free. Right now, all that is required is an email — one of these days, when I get a “round toit”, I will put up a sign-up form on my website to automate the process and remove the need for the step of sending the email.

I had a discussion with the range owner, and came up with the plan of ‘overbooking’, with one major difference from airline overbooking, namely, you won’t get bumped. The 14-student limit is because that’s all the room available in the range. There are actually 8 lanes, so technically, I could have 16 students in there at a time, but I have found that 14 is pretty crowded, and any more than that would be a safety problem. The classroom will seat 18, however, so I will register up to 18 in my class. The last four to sign up (and any volunteers who would rather shoot in a smaller group) will qualify after the rest of the class has finished and left — if more than 14 students show up.

To recap:

• If only 14 or fewer students show up, class proceeds as normal, and nobody has to stay late.
• If more than 14 students show up, the ones that registered last will have a supper break while I qualify the first group, and then will stay after the regular class to do the range qualification. The classroom will be closed and locked during the range qualifications.
• If you are a late enrollee, you won’t know for sure if you have to stay late until you actually get there, and I do a headcount.
• If there are more than 14 students, any of the early students may opt to join the 2nd group for the range qualification.

So far, the reaction to this proposal has been favorable. People don’t appear to mind the possibility of having to spend an extra hour in class as long as they know about it in advance. It means that I may have to put in an extra hour, but if it solves the problem, I’m willing to do that. I will give it a try for a couple of months to see how it works out.

The overbooking policy does not apply to the Sunday-morning renewal classes. My Sunday schedule is simply too tight to allow it, and I haven’t been having a no-show problem with my renewal students. So, the renewal class limit will stay at 14.

Long-term, the real solution may be to offer classes more often. Unfortunately, because of my work schedule (I don’t do CHL for a living, but that could change if I lose my day job) and my participation in my Lions club (I’m the incoming president for 2008-2009), it is difficult right now to arrange more than one Saturday a month for CHL.

Ok, I guess I would like to make a lot of money on the internet. Who wouldn’t? But it’s sort of like my career-limiting decision 3 decades ago never to go into management; that’s not where my heart is. I’d really rather teach CHL courses than be sucked into chasing the Big Bucks in internet marketing. I’ve tried chasing the Big Bucks in other fields (I started a computer store once, and I tried selling insurance for a while), and I’ve pretty much established that I lack one or more important personality traits to pull it off consistently (although I did ok for a couple of years as a high-dollar software consultant). Those of you who have been following my blog (all three of you?) know that I’m also a musician, and that I teach violin lessons — something that will never make me financially rich, but is a source of great enjoyment both for me and my students (and should be an enduring source of income for my retirement).

As for promoting the CHL business, I’ve pretty much accidentally gotten almost more business than I can comfortably handle with my current website. My chl-tx.com site rates pretty high on Google, Yahoo, and even some of the minor search engines. Even higher than some nicer-looking sites done by people who have hired “SEO experts”. I’m pulling in enough hits (and conversions) to come close to filling two classes a month. Since I am disinclined to teach more than that many classes (although that could change if I lose my day job), it’s hard to see how further optimization of my website is going to help me.

I do plan to do some extensive renovation of my site over the next few days, primarily in response to suggestions from my students. I’m hoping to make the site simpler, and break it up in ways that will make it easier to find the information you are interested in. And, yes, I plan to use some of the ideas in Joyner’s videos. But since that’s not the focus of this blog, I don’t plan to write any more on that topic. I’ve read some interesting books lately, and I plan to do some more reviews — and with a little more frequency. I really need to post in this blog at least once a week, or better yet, 3 times a week. (Yes, that’s in Joyner’s course)