What do my car, California DMV, and Texas DPS all have in common?

Actually, I'm not too sure myself, but my car is registered in the state of Texas and I'm out here in school in California. My emissions certificate from Texas DPS has just expired, and I need to get an emissions test done. Problem is, I went to a CA DMV certified smog test station and they said I don't need one from CA, just one from TX when (if) I return to the state. Now I'm confused, because I thought I could just go and get a CA sticker from the smog test station, and that would suffice until I reach TX. Smog Check man says it's not gonna do any good to have a CA emissions sticker because I'm registered to TX. TX DPS says get one if I'm out of state, because I'm not exempt from state law regarding emissions. What's the deal here? Anyone else been in a similar situation?

Your car's emission's test/tag must come from the state that the car is registered in.

My wife has the same situation as her car is registered in Texas and we are in Colorado. She drives a Toyota Camry and this is what she did:

Printed out the requirements off of the TX DPS website and brought it into Toyota and they used it as a checklist and signed it on Toyota paper with the date

Emailed the DPS first and got a confirmation email that if I did that it would be good enough

So you need to email the Texas DPS and get a confirmation that doing the required checks in California will be okay as well as where you can have the checks done, what you need to do for the checks and what types of proof you will need to have on you after it's done.

p.s. My wife also gets her yearly vehicle inspection certicficate here in Colorado from the dealership as well.

Excellent. That's just what I did (minus the printing stuff out).