My family, after having been DirecTV customers for about 13 years, has switched to FIOS.  This was driven by the lousy HD-DVR that DirecTV had – the software was buggy and changing channels was slow.  It also required rebooting with some regularity.  I’m a computer guy so rebooting is good with me but cable boxes should have better software.  The old standard definition DirecTV boxes worked much better.  The channel changing bit might have been due to the increased bandwidth requirements for HD but it’s hard to tell.

In any event, the installation took an entire day.  The fibre has replaced our DSL and the copper voice lines.  The TV comes in over the same fibre line.  The amount of bandwidth is just incredible – the internet smokes.  The quality of the TV signal is really good and the City channels look quite good.  The Verizon staff were very friendly and left no mess behind.

 Overall, I’m very happy so far.  My only nit would be that the FIOS equipment is an example of how not to do design – the remote has so many ridiculous lights on it that my 6 year old nephew probably designed it but it all seems to work well enough…

The City of Manassas today reached a settlement agreement with the Washington, Dc-based Equal Rights Center, HOME and eleven residents of Manassas in relation to allegations that the City discriminated against Hispanic residents.  There are three primary reasons, in my view, why we settled:

1.        There were several complaints against the City.  If the City lost on any of the specific complaints, we would have been liable for the plaintiff’s attorney fees and also damages.   Our exposure there was considerable – in between $4 and $7 million dollars.  We didn’t have to lose on all of them, just one.

2.       The insurance company  had notified us that they were content with the settlement number and if we decided not to settle that any future award or settlement would be borne entirely by Manassas City.  Needless to say that an award of $5+ million dollars would be catastrophic.

3.  The legal action was just getting started.  If we had proceeded to discovery and trial, the costs would have exploded and far outstripped the money that we had already spent and if we would have lost, the entire nut would have been paid by Manassas taxpayers.

So, at the end of the day, I wasn’t prepared to leave my home town to the tender mercies of a Federal jury in Alexandria.  This is a business decision, pure and simple in order to limit the damage to Manassas.  Trust me when I say that it isn’t on my list of fun things to do.