Apparently I was not reading the last pages of this thread. Looks like a lot of people are having the same experience I had. They must have improved the process greatly.
Just discovered this thread. Wow, apparently I just got lucky with my permit timing. I received mine in 5 days start to finish, including a weekend in there. I applied the morning of October 15th (a Wednesday) online. At 10:30 I scheduled my electronic fingerprint scan for 11:30 and got that...