Changes coming to CHL-TX.COM

Even though I have more than 30 years experience as a programmer, I am fairly new to web programming (after all, from my perspective, the Web is fairly new). That, and a severe lack of available time has led me to finally get some programming help on this website. Sometime next week, I will have the first cut at a real, automated registration process, which I expect will allow me to reclaim a substantial amount of the time that I have been using to process registrations by hand (with the occasional embarrassing error).

Since I am a programmer, I will be maintaining and expanding the site myself (mostly). Another thing that I plan to do fairly soon is replace the funky blue default WordPress template with something a bit more appealing — and readable. The only holdup at this point is finding one I like well enough to pay money for.

I also plan to give this blog a bit more focus than I have in the past. So far, I have been writing about whatever happened to be on my mind at the time, and the result has not been very consistent. I will be planning my posts around the following subjects:

1) Recent changes in Texas law, and implications on concealed carry
2) Book reviews on gun-related subjects (I read a lot, but I will be starting another separate blog for general book reviews on non-gun topics)
3) Tips and techniques related to concealed carry
4) Occasional snippets from my CHL and NRA courses
5) Answers to any questions that I have gotten from my CHL students that I had to research. If I had to go to DPS legal to get an answer, chances are that others can benefit from what I learned.

One thing I do NOT plan to cover, even though I am heavily opinionated on the subject, is politics. The blogosphere already has more than enough political pundits. I will, however, add some of my favorites to my blog roll.

I haven’t decided how often I want to post, but I think I will try for at least once per week, probably on Wednesdays, which is currently my least-cluttered day (I brought my laptop with me so I could post at lunch today, but the real reason is that I expected my Saturday CHL class to completely sell out today, which it did, and I wanted to be able to update my website when that happened).

Another item on my plate is working out a co-teach arrangement. So far, I have two prospects for co-teaching. One is my brother Thomas, who has recently retired from the Austin Fire Department, and the other is Mike Teaff, who has assisted me in the past with range testing. Co-teaching would have several benefits, including enabling me to handle more classes, give students more than one perspective, and make it much easier to organize and manage each class. If you are a qualified CHL (and/or NRA) instructor, and you would be interested in a co-teach arrangement, please drop me a line.