Joe817, thanks to you and everyone on this forum who are helping us along!
It didn't hurt to already have my FBI file (as DynaBlue keeps reminding me!), but it certainly must have helped to apply and pay online, do a little legwork (checking the criminal reports), find an instructor and fingerprinter (sp?) who both made sure everything was right, and watch the details.
Outside of maybe having come across a very good tech at DPS, I can't think of anything else that would have made a lot of difference.
It looks like those 6 additional people they hired back in August, plus changing the policy to permit non-uniformed officers to conduct background checks really paid off for them in dropping the processing times.
