Updated and final: 4.16 inches of rain this weekend

Not quite the 10-inch totals that parts of Dallas got, but we did all right nonetheless. The 4 inches here in Northshore will certainly keep the sprinklers off for several days.

Switching to Verizon FIOS? Read this first.

I'm fully FIOS now. Out went Comcast, out went TiVo. In their place, a fully-wired Verizon FIOS TV household with 4 TV's hooked up. 3 of those TV's have Digital Video Recorders, replacing TiVos. A couple of months ago, we swapped out Comcast Broadband for Verizon FIOS broadband. So now, our phone, broadband and video are all served by Verizon FIOS.

Further, we switched to Verizon Wireless recently as well, as they built a new tower near Fire Station #3, and now they're the only wireless carrier that can hit our house. (We back up to Grapevine Lake, so there's no towers behind us. Plus, we're on a downward slope toward the lake, so even the Cingular tower that's about a mile away does us no good.)

If you're thinking about getting FIOS in Flower Mound, here's the good and the bad, and what you need to know.

• You're probably going to save money with FIOS. After making calls and doing as many apples-to-apples price checks as I could, I found FIOS was about $10/month cheaper than Comcast on internet broadband service, and for me, I'll save about $25/month on TV service, compared to Comcast. By the way, I called Comcast and asked if they would price-match, but they said "no". I didn't have any real problems with Comcast, but hey if I can save $35/month for basically the same service, why not switch? We were paying a little over $100 for Comcast TV, plus 2 TiVos. Now we'll be paying under $80 for TV.
  
  
• Either FIOS is very popular, or Verizon is understaffed. Or perhaps it's somewhere in the middle. The wait to get your FIOS TV install is about a month, so you'll have to be patient. Don't cancel Comcast yet!
  
  
• FIOS uses your internal phone and TV (coax) wiring, but they hook up all new equipment to your house. No big deal. There's a new FIOS box (which requires a power outlet) hanging on an inside wall of our garage. The set-top converters are the same as Comcast. The remotes are configured differently though. They're slightly better than Comcast's, but not as good as TiVo's, which were very simple to figure out.
  
  
• Channel changing. FIOS' channel lineup is broader and deeper than Comcast's. For instance, there are more MTV channels, and more Discovery channels, and the like. That's OK. We don't subscribe to movie channels, but FIOS has a wide array of those too. The Pay-Per-View options are equivalent, as well as On Demand. The only channels we miss are two big-little ones: 1) The Channel 8 radar channel with the National Weather Service sound-track. The NBC WeatherPlus is a decent substitute for a quick forecast, but is not nearly as useful when it comes to monitoring severe weather. 2) There's no Flower Mound Town government channel, so you can't watch Town Council meetings. FIOS tells me this is coming in the summer or fall, but why not make it available now?
  
  
• FIOS picture quality is very good. As good as or better than Comcast on standard-definition TVs. Equal to Comcast on HD.
  
  
• FIOS tech service is good, and not-so-good. The FIOS automated menu tree is labyrinthian, and it takes 2-3 minutes to get to a live representative, even if you know what to say or what to push. It is voice-activated, but don't try calling the voice-activated system on your cell phone -- it goes wacky. Service techs are friendly and seem to be knowledgeable.
  
  
• Unlike Comcast, Verizon does not have a storefront for service or equipment. If you want to upgrade or exchange equipment, you have to wait for them to come to your house. See below. Comcast had dropped the ball on this too. At one time, we could swap equipment at a Flower Mound location. Then we had to go to Old Town Lewisville. Lately, we've had to visit Grapevine or Carrollton. Seems like they're scaling back too.
  
  
• Expect a wait for FIOS repair service too. Not nearly as long as the month it takes for an initial install, but prepare to wait 3-5 days to get a tech out for a service call. This really sucks when all you need is a new box. One of our DVRs crapped out after 3 days, and it was a long wait (3-5 days) to get a first-available appointment for a service tech. And then we had to wait for a 4-hour window for them to show up. Why not allow me to swap out a bad box at a local storefront during business hours, rather than have to wait days for you to come to my house?
  
  

Bottom line: Am I glad I switched? Yes. Is FIOS perfect? No. Can what's broken be fixed? Easily. Will Verizon fix it? I hope so, but it's up to them.

Check back to this post. I may think of more to add here. Here's a link to bookmark.

So how much did Lantana pay ...

... for that puff piece in today's News Connection? (read it for yourself here).

From the headline "Lantana looks out for residents", to the final paragraph, which includes gems like, "Lantana is a community that looks out for its residents and has no desire to keep information from them," Lantana's PR flacks couldn't have written a more positive piece. Or perhaps it was written by a PR pro. Hmmm.

What this site wants to be ... part 2

Last week I linked you to a couple of local news/participatory journalism sites, either of which could serve as a great model for something we could do in Flower Mound.

Along the same lines, here's my new favorite site: The Paramus Post, covering Paramus, NJ. Great content, clean design, and it looks totally professional, though I'm sure most of the writing is done by neighbors like you and me. Both the Post and the previously-mentioned iBrattleboro.com are built on a software portal program called Geeklog. Geeklog runs on a Unix platform, and it involves learning something about php and mySQL, a programming language and a database engine, neither of which I knew anything about a few days ago. I'm trying to learn though. Any advice?

The races are on, but the ponies are few

Three races in May, and only four candidates. An interesting turn of events.

One-term incumbents Paul Stone and Laurie Long didn't draw a single challenger, which means they'll be serving two more years. Only Mayor Jody Smith has an opponent, Jim Lang, the town's former staff Economic Development director. But we knew that a few weeks ago.

Conclusions:

• I guess people in town are feeling a lot like me -- general satisfaction with the way Town Hall is being managed today. Jim Lang may try to stir up some dissent, but I don't think he'll find much. I think Jim is running more out of ambition than with any great dissatisfaction with the way things are managed at 2121 Cross Timbers Rd. Ambition is not necessarily a bad thing for a candidate, but I'll be interested to see how Lang tries to differentiate himself from the mayor, who by all accounts seems to be well-liked and respected. I'm a big fan of Mayor Smith, by the way. She earned my vote a long long time ago.
  
  
• Voters United is done as a political force in Flower Mound. I guess we could have written this statement last year, when they were all but silent in the May races. But even with the Master Plan review this year (a subject VU leaders know better than any other group in town), VU has kept quiet. Since there's probably still no love lost between Laurie Long and the once-mayor-turned-council-candidate Lori DeLuca, I wouldn't have been surprised to see an old VU supporter rise up to take on Long this year. But seeing nothing to support that notion, I think VU has had it. They're still filing regular campaign finance reports with the Texas Ethics Commission (though on paper only -- boo! -- instead of their previous electronic filings). It appears VU has about $175 in the bank, according to their filings, enough to keep the beast breathing, but not much more. It's hard to believe it's been two years since the VU machine self-destructed. I'm still not writing them off totally. There's a lot of open land in the western stretches of town, and it won't be long for one of the landowners to try to build houses where they aren't allowed. Then we'll see VU again.
  
  

The single-best improvement to Flower Mound traffic... that didn't involve roadwork itself

The headline is almost true. Without the millions spent to widen FM3040, we would have never gotten to this point in the first place.

But the single-best improvement to Flower Mound traffic has been the recent switch of the Morriss-FM3040 light to two-way traffic on green on each direction. Even after 3040 was finished a couple of months ago, drivers still had to wait and waste time sitting at a light in which only one direction was getting a green. Now the light functions more like just about every other stop light in the world, with two-way greens in both directions.

Too bad they can't do the same thing with FM3040 traffic at FM2499, but the double-left turn lanes here prevent that.

Where else but flowermoundroad.com are you going to find insightful reporting like this?

Flower Mound's best drives

Like my totally-subjective list of Flower Mound's best restaurants, this next list will highlight the best roads in town. Ranks are be based on the total quality of the on-road and off-road experience. Paving, safety, speed, view, destination -- all key factors. It's totally trivial, but what the heck. Off we go:

5. FM2499/International Parkway (south of Lakeside Pkwy) -- It took me a while to come up with this entry, probably because I take it for granted. I drive it twice a day on workdays. As long as this is a 6-lane road with no businesses alongside, it will be a great drive. But if we bring in some great Lakeside businesses, it could be even greater. Unless you look at a map you don't realize that you make two full 90-degree turns on this road, because the big bends between Gerault and Silveron are so gentle, but you do. In the evening, driving northbound, you often get a great sunset staring right at you.

4. FM1171 the view -- Drive west on FM1171 past Tour 18. You'll come around a curve and then see this enormous panarama open up in front of you. You can see 20 miles, I figure. The Speedway is off in the distance, as is Alliance. In 10 years, this area will be full of office towers and homes and retail, so enjoy the open space for now.

3. Flower Mound Road thru Wellington -- This is the most (sub)urban road on the list. The rest are more rural. I like the way this road winds through the neighborhood, and I like the sidewalks too. Just a nice drive.

2. Wichita Trail -- Like FM1171, this road bridges Flower Mound suburbia to the open land to the west. Recently improved, but still a 2-lane country road, which passes some of the fanciest neighborhoods in town. We love that home at the western edge of Wichita, where it turns into Cardinal.

1. FM3040 -- I don't know how many millions we spent on this road, but it's worth every penny in my book. The old 3040 was a parking lot, particularly at the Morriss light, but also in Lewisville. The new 3040 seems like it hardly has any cars at all. I know the new 3040 will fill up too, over time. But for now, it's totally tops.

This is not good!

Just a day after I expressed cheer for how well all the District 63 primary candidates conducted their campaigns, things have apparently changed for the worse as we head into a runoff.

Click this link in Thursday's Dallas Morning News, and you'll find venom being shot out of both Lakusta's and Parker's mouths.

This is not good, and this is not what this voter wants to see for the next 5 weeks.

Give the man a Hand

Any candidate in this era with hand-painted signs shouldn't have a chance in a sophisticated area like ours, right? So how did J.W. Hand win the most votes in last night's JP 4 race? Were voters confused that he was the famed Mr. Hand from my favorite 1980s movie.

What are you, people? On dope? -- A famous Mr. Hand quote from "Fast Times at Ridgemont High".

I dunno, but you gotta Hand it to him.

Hand got 38%, Shaw got 29% -- they'll both be in the April 11 runoff. That means there's a third of the vote up for grabs.

The hand-painted signs are growing on me. Except for the ones where the hand waves. They're kinda creepy.

Wow - what a race!

Actually you could say that three times. Three races - House 63, JP 4 and Commish 4 - are all going to runoffs. No surprise there. Anytime you have that many candidates with no incumbents, and anytime the candidates are roughly equals in funding and energy, you're going to have close races.

But the split in House 63 was remarkable -- 24.6%, 23.6%, 23.1%, 15.1% and 13.6%. In the end, I voted for Anne Lakusta, but I still couldn't make up my mind going into the polling place. I just thought she would be stronger on schools.

Now it's down to two. Unless Grunden requests and wins a recount, our two finalists are Lakusta and Tan Parker. I think Lakusta has her work cut out for her, because I think Parker will be the stronger finisher in a one-on-one race. He ran the best campaign, to be sure, considering he had no previous experience as an office-holder coming into the race.

What I'd like to see Parker do is challenge Lakusta on schools. Tan, what can you do to make our schools better? That is my question. I think it's a sentiment running very strong with Texas voters (note the stunning Grusendorf defeat in Arlington's House 94). I don't think Lakusta would have garnered as many votes as she did without voters showing a primary concern for education, and funding. If Tan can wrest the education issue from Lakusta, he can win the runoff 60-40 or better.

What this site wants to be when it grows up

The web has made community/citizen/participatory journalism possible and even profitable. If I didn't have a full-time job, I'd be turning this blog into a community-journalism website. Anyone want to partner?

The community site I like the most are: ibrattleboro.com, covering all angles of news in small-town Brattleboro, VT. What's unique about this sites is that the primary news and commentary is user-generated. So instead of having just one voice, you have the voices of many, all in the same place. Anyone who registers can post, and be heard right away. Anyone can comment on any post. The community is lightly-monitored by the webmaster, to ensure a base level of good conduct, but it's otherwise self-regulated. This website was created by a local web developer, so he's able to parlay his web design skills into an investment with this online community.

There are other folks taking hyper-local news to the next (read corporate) level. The BackFence project sprouting up near Washington DC looks promising. They say they've gotten $3 million in upfront financing to start a nationwide network of sites.

Two other UCR real estate projects

UCR Realty is building two of the four corners at FM3040 and Morriss Road. Here are their flyers for the Pines of Flower Mound (anchored by Kroger) on the SW corner, and Morriss Commons (a smaller slice of real estate, anchored by CVS) on the NW corner. You'll need Adobe Acrobat, of course.

Update 5.14.06: I've updated the links. If in the future the links fail again, go to ucrealty.com and do a search for all Flower Mound or Highland Village properties. Feel free to post if the links fail, and I'll fix them again. I cannot find a permanent link to these properties. The links provided are to sales flyers, which are updated periodically, and that's why the links change.

Great community website - Lantana Links

Check out LantanaLinks.com as a great example for what a community website should be. Tons of updated content, good ads (even candidate ads for Savoie and Weaver), a thousand links. If you live in Lantana, this is a must read. If you live in Flower Mound, you too will learn a lot by visiting here.

I'm sure there's a market for such a site for our town. I wish I had the time to do it, but I love my real job (TV News) too much to give it up.

The Shops at Highland Village - wow!

If you haven't heard what's going in on the NW corner of FM2499 and FM407, check this out. First, download the flyer published by the real estate broker, UCR. It's a 3mb download, and you'll need the free Adobe reader, but well worth the trouble.

Inside the flyer, you'll find terrific, detailed demographic information about our area, and you'll find a current site plan that includes the names of the businesses that have already signed up. It's quite a list, which includes:

• AMC Theatres
  
• American Eagle
  
• Ann Taylor
  
• Aveda
  
• Barnes and Noble
  
• Ben and Jerry's (B&J across the street from Carvel! -- fat city!!!)
  
• Chicos
  
• Coldwater Creek & Spa
  
• Eddie Bauer
  
• Houlihans
  
• Limited
  
• MiCocina
  
• Potbelly
  
• Rockfish
  
• Shoe Pavilion
  
• Snuffers (hooray! -- SMU grads like me might as well just move in here)
  
• Victoria's Secret
  
• Williams Sonoma
  

Isn't this what Parker Square was supposed to be?

Speed trap x2 today!

You'll sometimes see an FM police officer parked in the ununsed left-turn-lane-to-nowhere on FM2499 between Gerault and Silveron. Today I saw something new. Not only was there an officer parked in the left-turn lane, but just a quarter mile to the north, driving north toward Silveron, there was a second officer, on a motorcycle, cleverly hidden in the few spare trees on the right-side of the road.

I wanted to snap a picture with my phone, but it's hard to do that well when you're driving 70! Shhh.

Goodbye Mudds

Sad news in Lantana. No, not the complaints about the out-of-control taxes and water bills and the lack of homeowner representation on the board.

The real sad news is that Mudds restaurant is gone. A great place for home-style cooking in that new shopping center around the 407 curve just west of Lantana.

I loved Mudds so much that I listed it in a tie for 3rd on my 2005 list of best local restaurants.

We still have Cotton Patch for home cooking, but I liked Mudds better.

Comments anyone?

I've enabled this feature on the site. Click on the link below each post, and write what you think, for others to see. And if you'd like to refer this blog to someone else, you can click on the little envelope icon next to the comments link in each post. There you can send e-mail letting people know about this little place in the world.

Funnel of Love, and FM3040, and thanks

How great is FM3040 now that it's 3 lanes from FM2499 to Edmonds Ln in Lewisville? Even at rush hour, I can now drive it in about 6-7 minutes what used to be the longest 4 miles in Texas. Great work, TxDOT. Thanks also to our current and former Town councils for getting this project moved up the list with some serious local seed coin.

The Funnel of Love reconstruction is coming soon. Haven't had a chance to see the detailed plans yet. Mayor Smith told me a few days ago she's really excited about the possibilities for better traffic flow around Grapevine Mills Mall, specifically another flyover to get us from 121 onto 2499. I think the Town should investigate spending more seed money to get the FM2499 component of the Funnel of Love reconstruction moved up the schedule.

Remember the good ol' days after the FM2499 flyover was built? You could exit off 121 and fly home all the way to 3040 without stopping for a single light. There was about a 2-year window after FM2499 was widened to its existing specs, before they built the Mall and added subsequent lights along our lifeline road.

Another review: Via Real in Las Colinas

On a more recent Saturday night, wife and I had another date. Once again, we were looking for a place to eat, and once again, we weren't hungry for anything in Flower Mound. I scoured Guidelive that day for somewhere new to go, and I'm glad I did. We wound up going to Irving/Las Colinas for a terrific Southwestern restaurant called Via Real. Nice atmosphere (Santa Fe inspired inside, upscale strip center outside). Very attentive wait staff. (Love and War should take lessons.) Inventive cuisine. Upscale prices, but not off the chart. Dinner for two (no alcohol, plus tip) $65. Worth every penny. Via Real is on MacArthur south of 114, near Northgate.

Restaurant review: Love and War in Texas

Below you can read my lament that I'm tired of all the restaurants in Flower Mound. I posted that a few weeks ago, and my thoughts haven't changed much since then. So we've been looking elsewhere.

About a month ago, wife and I ate at Love and War in Texas. This, as you probably know, sits in the short-lived Trail Dust Steakhouse site at Grapevine Mills Mall. L&W is a friendly place that inside looks like it doubles as a restaurant and a dance hall. Think Gruene Hall along the Guadalupe, only much newer and with much better air conditioning. Great atmosphere including live music. But the food and the service were not good the night we visited.

[Before I go any farther, let me tell you the difference between myself and a professional dining critic like you might find in the Dallas Morning News or D Magazine. The real critics will visit a restaurant at least twice (sometimes more often) before putting pen to paper. They'll visit at different times of the day, and choose different dishes off the menu each time. That way they can eliminate one-time successes or failures, and figure out what kind of experience the restaurant will be for the reader who peruses the review. I'm not that kind of critic. I'll write about restaurants after only a visit, but I'll be honest about it. Whether you choose to heed my advice is up to you.]

At L&WnTX, our waitress barely acknowledged our existence and played hard-to-get all evening. Wife and I were on a date, so we didn't need much attention. But basic chores like taking menu orders, refilling drinks, and bringing us a check seemed to be low on the waitress' to-do list that night.

The food, not much better. They have a great menu, and I do want to go back there to try some of their more adventurous items (particularly the game), but this night I wanted baby back ribs. Unfortunately, the ribs they brought out appeared to have been in the oven all day long. They were overcooked to begin with, and dry to boot. I mentioned this to the indifferent waitress, and she offered to bring me a new plate. I declined, saying I had already eaten what I had been given. A few minutes later, the manager shows up at our booth with a half-rack of ribs and offers them to me. These were much fresher. He was very kind and apologetic. He says his first priority is the food, and I greatly appreciate that sentiment. I kindly suggested he go back to his ovens and chuck any old ribs still on the rack.

Nice restaurant -- I'd like to go back there, but a big disappointment for me on our first visit.

The good, the bad and The News Connection

Why do I write so much about The News Connection? I guess it's because what they do each week strikes a chord with me. Sometimes I'm thrilled, sometimes I'm horrified.

This week's issue is a perfect example. I enjoyed the second-front "SK8R boys" skateboard story -- a good point-of-view piece featuring kids who don't ordinarily make a newspaper. (Lots of kids get ink, but they're usually athletes, Eagle Scouts, "A" students and such.) The sports coverage is getting better too. Several good features throughout the paper, in fact. They're covering more news-of-the-day as well, keeping the "news" in "newspaper".

The News Connection is also getting all the good local Letters to the Editor too. On the weekend before Election Day, I was stunned to see no letters in today's (Saturday's) Leader, but the News Connection had a bunch. Didn't the Leader used to be the place where all the good letters got published first?

But here's the one journalistically-horrifying thing that keeps popping up on TNC's front page every week, it seems: the one-sided slam piece. This week, in another of a long line of drop-by sit-down interviews, The News Connection interviews Chris Ventura, who's running against incumbent Darlene Whitten in the County Court at Law No. 1 race in Tuesday's GOP primary. Because no Democrats dare to run for office in southern Denton County, the winner of Tuesday's vote wins the seat in November too. What stuns me is that there is no opportunity presented for balance in this story. Ms. Ventura's claims and criticisms are left unchecked. Since this is the last issue of The News Connection before election day, there's no opportunity to provide necessary journalistic balance. Would it have killed the TNC reporters and editors to have contacted Judge Whitten to get another side to the story? I wouldn't think not. Either they don't understand the importance of seeking balance in controversial stories, or they don't care. I'm hoping they'll grow out of this someday. It's a dangerous precedent to set.

Does this mean every article in every issue has to be 50-50 balanced? Of course not. Balance can take place over a period of time too. A profile of one candidate one week; a profile of an opposing candidate the next. That's perfectly fine. But that's an impossibility in this judge's race now that TNC has profiled just one of the candidates before election day. The voters lose when reporters and publishers play favorites in their reporting and publishing.

Bottom line: I give The News Connection great credit for building what I see is a successful local newspaper. From the looks of the ads they're selling, I hope they're rolling in the dough. I wish them the best, and I hope they'll keep getting better at what they do.

The next great Mayor's race

Waiting to see who all wants in on the Mayor's race in Flower Mound this year. So far Mayor Smith is in, and the Town's former economic development director Jim Lang, who resigned/was dismissed from his paid staff position when he made his political intentions known. I've heard former newspaper publisher Mike Fickling has picked up a candidate's packet (a preliminary step to filing) from the Town Secretary, but that doesn't mean he's in -- yet at least. Perhaps there are others who I haven't heard of yet.

I think this race will be interesting, because I think economic development will be a big issue this year. I've met Mr. Lang only once. Last year he and the Town set up a citizen's Economic Development Advisory Group, and I was asked to join. We met one time, I recall, last May. We were supposed to meet quarterly, but haven't convened since -- disappointing to me since I thought we provided him and his team (and the council) some useful ideas. Another disappointment for me was the difficulty in getting Mr. Lang or his staff associate (Kathy?) to return e-mails or phone messages about the committee when I had questions. They invited me to participate, so I was always curious why they always took so long to reply.

There's no question we're doing well with economic development on the Town's northern border. All the developments at 2499 and 407 seem quite strong, and there's more to come there. I'm still bewildered why Lakeside and Silveron haven't taken off, and I wonder if we're doing all the right things to attract great corporate businesses here. But as long as the fabulous hotel gets built on the lake, we should be OK in the long run.

Mr. Lang says he decided to run for Mayor after he found out he was not going to be a finalist for the Town Manager position. So I do question his motive a bit, but not knowing any different, I'll give him the nod that he's running because he cares about the Town.

All that said, I'm quite content with our mayor Jody Smith. More than that, I'm a big fan. Whereas the mayor's chair had been the seat of controversy the previous 6 years, she's brought a much-needed calm and civility to it the past 2 years. I think she represents the Town very well. She's very professional, very polished, very friendly, very bright. She has worked to gain a strong grasp of the issues that affect our Town. She seems to be well-liked by her peers in politics. In fact, I've never heard anyone say a negative word about her personally. I've gotten to know Jody a little bit over the past 2 years, and I enjoy her company. I don't do endorsements much on this page, but my support is 100% behind Mayor Jody Smith.

Filing ends in a couple of weeks. More to come.