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smokebomb

Certifiably Surly
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Posts posted by smokebomb

  1. 3 hours ago, Captainant said:

    Not sure what it has to do with anything, but they both are. Dad is a >65yo advanced Parkinsons patient and granddad is a >80yo retired AF colonel that just beat cancer, so I kind of figured they'd be among the first to receive doses, but go figure.

    You may want to contact the VA for your grandfather’s vaccine. A buddy was able to schedule an appointment through them in San Antonio for his 95 year-old, WW2 veteran dad. 

  2. 31 minutes ago, Hollywood said:

    Serious quesiton, has her past ever been exposed beyond this forum?

    The Austin subreddit has had plenty discussions on her but the impression I got was that the media wasn’t covering a lot of her antics because it would have been mainly “slut shaming”. I think her constant need for attention over half a decade speak to her character but then again, that appears to be the norm for most politicians today. 

    • Hook 'Em 1
    • Like 1
  3. 2 minutes ago, Blotto said:

    Probably a naive question, but is it impossible to wipe the hardware and reinstall firmware you know isn't malicious? Is it able to just not worth the time and money?

    Not a naive question - you can reinstalled a known, good firmware but you have no idea what other areas on the hardware they may have left a backdoor. They could have installed a firmware that reflashed a chip that normally doesn’t get modified during a normal update. Reflashing the network gear to a known good will fix part of the problem but not the secondary chip they also reflashed/hacked. The reality is they probably didn’t do that but you can’t be certain & because these are classified networks, you have to assume they left a backdoor. So out comes all the network hardware. And they may even have to replace server hardware since they could have also gotten the credentials to manage the server firmware. 

    • Hook 'Em 1
  4. 19 hours ago, immamac said:

    They can use the underlying hardware, but everything from the hypervisor up is going to have to get blown away and started fresh and migrated through some logical capacity. 

    Actually- there is serious talk that if you got breached, you may also have to replace all your networking hardware. I believe the Solarwinds install required admin privileges to the networking gear (and if not required, a lot of admins gave it to them). With that access, you could install your own customized firmware. At this point, the hardware can’t be trusted & you have to pull it out & replace. I believe the majority of government agencies will go this route, if not also large enterprises that were known victims.

    As for Solarwinds, there was already talk pre-attack they were going to split up into two different companies. My guess is that this split is expedited, the spin-off gets all the good people and money while “Solarwinds” eventually gets shuttered. 

  5. 1 hour ago, Bozo_Casanova said:

    And lest I wasn’t clear, fellas, I’m not defending council. They suffer from weak stomachs and toxic positivity. 
    But Austin voters are the problem. We are afflicted with a terminal combination of pound foolishness and toxic nostalgia. And if you don’t trust council to pull a lane that doesn’t work out of a short stretch of road you probably shouldn’t count on them to build you a  time machine. 

     

    • Hook 'Em 1
  6. A few comments on this impending train wreck:

    1. A challenger seems to always have an advantage in a runoff, especially since their supporters are more likely to to make the effort to come out & vote. Just look at Cruz defeating Dewhurst. Once she made the runoff, she had a very real chance of winning. 
    2. No one should be surprised about the Statesman’s shitty reporting. Armybrat might be the only one here who can remember when they last had any journalistic ability. 
    3. I think she is an awful candidate & will likely do more harm than good for District 6 & Austin but she is a direct result of the Austin City council’s kumbaya, tone-deaf policies. 
    4. For decent a summary of her past internet history, including her Shaggy posts, a reddit poster linked to the following blog archive (may have been posted in this thread earlier): https://archive.is/ivW52

    2020 - the gift that just keeps on giving. 

    • Hook 'Em 1
  7. I'm sure this is not related at all:

    https://kvia.com/news/crime/2020/11/14/several-people-believed-shot-as-gunfire-rings-out-in-central-el-paso/

    Quote

    Attorney couple ID’d as central El Paso shooting victims: wife killed, husband remains hospitalized

    UPDATE, Nov. 17: The victims in a weekend shooting at a central El Paso home have been identified, both were lawyers who worked for the Texas Attorney General's Office.

    Georgette Kaufman was shot and killed, while her husband 47-year-old Daniel Kaufman remained hospitalized Tuesday in stable condition but was expected to recover.

    The couple's 16-year-old son was in Dallas for a fencing tournament at the time of the shootings, according to his coaches. The teen has been staying with another relative since his return to El Paso on Sunday.

    Police have not yet made any arrests in the attack.

    ORIGINAL REPORT, Nov. 14: EL PASO, Texas -- A woman was killed and a man wounded in a shooting Saturday evening at a central El Paso home and police were searching for the gunman.

    Detectives remained at the scene into the late night hours actively investigating the shooting, which took place in the 3000 block of Copper Avenue near Memorial Park.

    Police said a woman was found shot dead at the house, while a 47-year-old man was wounded. The survivor was hospitalized in stable condition.

    Heavily-armed officers could be seen in the neighborhood following the shooting as they scoured the area and the nearby park looking for the shooter as a helicopter buzzed overhead.

    A police spokesman said an arrest had not yet been made and authorities were continuing to look for "somebody that is outstanding."

    Investigators did not indicate the relationship between the shooting victims or identify a potential motive for the attack.

     

  8. Nate Paul getting a write up in the Texas Tribune:

    https://www.texastribune.org/2020/10/07/nate-paul-ken-paxton/

    Quote

    Who is Nate Paul, the real estate investor linked to abuse-of-office allegations against Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton?

    Earlier in his career, media reports called the now 33-year-old real estate investor a “wunderkind,” a “rising star” and a “prodigy.” Now he’s fighting more than a dozen bankruptcies and has been linked to criminal allegations against an embattled Texas politician.

    BY EDGAR WALTERS AND DAN ROSENZWEIG-ZIFF OCT. 7, 20204 HOURS AGO

    Editor’s note: This story contains explicit language.

    Walk through downtown Austin or its rapidly developing nearby neighborhoods and it’s impossible to miss the massive black banners draped over office buildings, warehouses and bars. “Another World Class Project,” reads one posted to the metal siding of a squat industrial building downtown. Other banners riff on their own ubiquity with a pithy line popularized by DJ Khaled: “Another One.”

    The promotional campaign belongs to an Austin-based real estate investment firm owned by Nate Paul. World Class Capital Group has acquired an enviable portfolio of some of Austin’s choicest parcels with ambitious plans to lease or develop them. Paul has described himself in media reports as wanting to become “the youngest self-made real estate billionaire.”

    These days, Paul’s name is associated not just with a real estate empire but with a series of recent high-profile bankruptcies and a much-publicized raid on his home and business office last year by FBI and U.S. Department of Treasury agents. The investigation remained active as recently as April, though no criminal charges have been filed, according to the Austin Business Journal.

    And now he has been linked to bribery and abuse-of-office allegations made against Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton.

    According to the Houston Chronicle, former top aides to Paxton have alleged that the attorney general inappropriately appointed a special prosecutor to target “adversaries” of Paul, who donated $25,000 to Paxton’s reelection campaign in 2018. Those “adversaries” appear to include agents who raided Paul’s home and business office, though Paxton has confirmed only that he authorized an investigation into “allegations of crimes relating to the FBI, other government agencies and individuals” and that the investigation involved Paul.

    A Paxton-appointed special prosecutor, Brandon Cammack, obtained subpoenas to look into allegations Paul made accusing federal authorities of wrongdoing when they raided his home and offices, according to the Austin American-Statesman.

    And a text message, which was first obtained by the Houston Chronicle, sent last week by senior staff at the attorney general’s office to Paxton does not specify the nature of the real estate investor’s involvement in the “violations of law” they accuse Paxton of committing, but the aides mention Paxton’s “relationship and activities with Nate Paul.”

    Paxton has said the allegations made against him by high-ranking attorneys at his agency are false, brought by “rogue” employees, and that he does not intend to resign. He also said he appointed a special prosecutor to lead the investigation to keep the investigation “independent” of his relationship with Paul.

    Paul did not respond to interview requests for this story.

    Earlier in his career, media reports called the now 33-year-old investor a “wunderkind,” a “rising star” and a “prodigy,” with an estimated net worth of nearly $1 billion. Raised in Victoria by Indian immigrant parents, Paul changed his name from Natin to Nate, moved to Austin, enrolled at the University of Texas and then dropped out after acquiring a taste for flipping real estate, according to media reports.

    The J&S Koppell building on Congress Avenue in Austin is one of several buildings owned by the investment group that displays the World Class Capital Group banner. Credit: Amna Ijaz/The Texas Tribune

    He founded World Class in 2007 and has said he got his start purchasing property at low prices and in a low-interest-rate environment after the 2008 financial crisis. He bought storage facilities, land in Austin, a marina on Lake Travis and a building being used by a call center in south Austin, according to a profile in Forbes. “I was buying at the pit of the crisis,” he told the magazine. “In many of those deals, there was no other bidder.”

    By 2015, he had amassed hundreds of millions of dollars, primarily from institutional investors such as pension funds and insurance companies, according to the Austin Business Journal.

    “Is this guy for real?” the publication asked in a 2015 profile of Paul. The next year, he claimed a spot on Forbes’ “30 under 30” list of promising young financiers.

    “I started with zero,” Paul told the Business Journal. “There was no legacy. I’m self-made.”

    In brief media appearances, Paul has shown off a taste for luxury. In 2013, a New York Post report documented his attendance at Leonardo DiCaprio’s 39th birthday party. In 2017, he drove a Forbes reporter around Austin in a Bentley to point out his real estate holdings. He has posed for photos in the Austin Business Journal in his office in the penthouse of Austin’s iconic Frost Bank Tower. And he owns a nearly 9,200-square-foot mansion in a wealthy West Austin neighborhood appraised at $2.4 million, according to local tax records.

    A 2017 Forbes profile pronounced him a “Texas Tycoon” and estimated his net worth to be about $800 million. Paul’s company at the time had $1.2 billion in assets and 10 million square feet of commercial space, ranging from offices to retail outlets to self-storage facilities, according to Forbes.

    As his real estate ventures expanded across state lines, with World Class and its related companies opening offices in New York and Los Angeles, Paul attracted controversy at home. Former employees of one of his rooftop bars in Austin sued after the bar allegedly cheated them out of tips, according to Forbes. The case was settled privately in 2014.

    And among local musicians, Paul became known as something of a venue-killer, as World Class developed a reputation for buying properties leased by bars and clubs and promptly evicting them as tenants.

    Vincent Salvaggio, the owner of downtown rooftop venue Ethics Music Lounge, told the Austin Chronicle in 2018 that World Class Capital locked the bar’s doors for delinquent payment immediately after purchasing the property, unbeknownst to Salvaggio.

    “They had me locked out before I even got the legal paperwork that they owned it and they haven’t let me back in to get my shit — not my sound system, not even my checkbook,” Salvaggio told the Chronicle at the time. “They’re trying to raise the rent on everything, so it’s good for [them] to get people out who are playing lower rent.”

    Recent local news reports and bankruptcy filings indicate Paul’s business may have fallen on difficult times. At least 18 entities connected to World Class Holdings have filed for bankruptcy in the past year, according to the Austin Business Journal. Paul’s firm has used the bankruptcy process to “fend off creditors and provide a degree of breathing room as it tries to find a way out of default on multiple loans tied to real estate across the city,” the publication reported.

    In September, American Express sued Paul and World Class Capital seeking to collect more than $300,000 in credit card debt, court records show.

    Meanwhile, Paxton’s office has come to Paul’s defense in at least one other legal matter, records show. Paul’s World Class firm works through a complex web of more than a dozen affiliated business partnerships, which jointly own properties with investors.

    A dispute arose two years ago between companies affiliated with World Class and the Roy F. and Joann Cole Mitte Foundation, which invested in multiple Austin properties with the companies. The foundation is an Austin-based nonprofit that provides grants to charitable organizations and academic scholarships for students with financial needs.

    The Mitte Foundation sued Paul in 2018, claiming he wasn’t sharing financial information on their jointly owned investments that Paul’s businesses managed. The case went to arbitration, and on July 1, 2019, a company affiliated with World Class agreed to buy out Mitte’s interest in the real estate partnerships for $10.5 million with payment due that August.

    It never came, said Ray Chester, the lawyer representing the Mitte Foundation in the case.

    In October 2019, the judge in the case ordered a receiver to take over the business partnerships, which would compel Paul to reveal the financial records that Chester said still hadn’t been shared with the Mitte Foundation. Chester said that within days, Paul “blatantly defied” the arbitrator’s ruling and said he had sold the partnerships at less than half of their market value.

    But the sale was to another company affiliated with Paul, Chester said.

    “He basically sold it to himself at below market value,” Chester said, although court records show the sale was never consummated.

    As Paul’s firm cycled through teams of attorneys and held back on making the $10.5 million payment, Paxton’s office intervened in the case on behalf of World Class and its business affiliates this June, court records show. Paxton argued that his office needed to “protect the interests of the public” because the suit involved a charitable trust.

    In July, Paxton asked a judge to halt the case. During that time, Chester said Paxton’s office called him five to 10 times per day to try to get him to settle for “pennies on the dollar,” calls that Chester characterized as “vaguely threatening.”

    On Sept. 20, less than two weeks before news broke about the allegations against Paxton, the attorney general’s office reversed itself and announced its intention to step away from the case, which is still ongoing.

    After filing for bankruptcy in August, the World Class affiliate handling investments in the property did not pay the $10.5 million or turn over the records, Chester said. But a clause in the settlement agreement does allow the Mitte Foundation to take a valuable, larger ownership share in the downtown property, Chester said.

    As media reports surfaced detailing Paul’s connection to the allegations against Paxton, Texas Republican politicians who had received campaign contributions from Paul announced they would donate the funds to charities. Campaigns for Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, Comptroller Glenn Hegar, Land Commissioner George P. Bush and U.S. Rep. Chip Roy distanced themselves from Paul’s campaign contributions, which ranged from $2,500 to $10,000.

    Roy, formerly a top Paxton aide at the Texas attorney general’s office, also called on Paxton to resign.

    Although Paul has not said much publicly since garnering attention in the past year for the FBI raid and his bankruptcy lawsuits, he frequently shares inspirational quotes on his LinkedIn profile. He shared a Sun Tzu quote this summer: “Pretend to be weak, so your enemy may grow arrogant,” appending the hashtag #WorldClass.

    On Monday, he posted another update: “Work Hard in Silence, Let Success Make the Noise.”

    In the Austin Business Journal’s 2015 profile of Paul, outside observers praised him with a tinge of skepticism. David Armbrust, a real estate attorney at Armbrust & Brown, called Paul’s meteoric rise “very impressive.”

    “I suppose like many in the real estate business, he may fit into one of two categories — either a rising star or a shooting star,” Armbrust said at the time. “Only time will tell.”

     

    • Hook 'Em 2
  9. 2 hours ago, Fudge Nuggets said:

    When did you get the email from MLB about the credit / refund?  I paid for the full year like normal back in Feb but haven't seen anything.

    I got the MLB refund email around 11am CDT this morning. 

  10. This should get interesting:

    https://www.houstonchronicle.com/texas-sports-nation/college/article/Judge-orders-Baylor-to-turn-over-Pepper-Hamilton-15311670.php

    Quote

    Judge orders Baylor to turn over Pepper Hamilton documents

    David Barron , Houston Chronicle   June 2, 2020 Updated: June 2, 2020 5:52 p.m.

    Texas Sports Nation  // College 

    A federal magistrate judge Tuesday issued a sharply worded order that requires Baylor University to provide documents prepared by the Philadelphia law firm Pepper Hamilton to attorneys for 15 women who are suing Baylor for alleged Title IX violations.

    Magistrate Judge Andrew W. Austin, who is overseeing the case filed in an Austin federal court, gave Baylor until July 15 to turn over documents to attorneys for the women and to designate documents it believes are not subject to evidence discovery in the long-running lawsuit.

    Austin warned Baylor that he will take a dim view of an overbroad effort by the school to withhold Pepper Hamilton documents from discovery.

    “The court will not tolerate any more misreadings of a court order,” Austin wrote. “Baylor has made a habit of avoiding discovery compliance by interpreting orders in its favor even when the order directs otherwise.”

    He added, “The court warns Baylor that it will impose sanctions if Baylor fails to comply in good faith with this order.”

    Austin also had a sharp response for Baylor’s suggestion that it will attempt to prevent at trial any mention of Pepper Hamilton, which was hired in 2015 to investigate allegations of sexual assault of female students on and off campus and of Baylor’s shortcomings in enforcing Title IX protections.

    Prohibiting mention of Pepper Hamilton’s work, he said, “would require witnesses to testify in half-truths in order to pretend that Baylor conducted its own investigation and originated its own policy reforms.”

    “Baylor is effectively asking its witnesses to lie,” he added.

    Pepper Hamilton’s investigation resulted in the submission of more than 100 proposed Title IX enforcement reforms to the school, which in May 2016 adopted the firm’s suggestions and also fired football coach Art Briles and demoted university president Kenneth Starr, who subsequently resigned.

    Attorneys Chad Dunn and Jim Dunnam, who represent the 15 women, have repeatedly sought copies of what was referred to as the “Pepper Hamilton report” but were told by Baylor there was no written report of that description that could be handed over.

    In Tuesday’s order, however, Austin ruled that through its defense in the case, Baylor has waived attorney-client privilege of Pepper Hamilton’s work product. He said those documents should be handed over to the women’s attorneys unless Baylor can meet strict standards for declaring certain documents as privileged information.

    “This is not a situation where a university conducted its own investigation and implemented its own reforms while consulting with a law firm for guidance,” Austin wrote.

    “Pepper Hamilton, not Baylor, conducted the investigation, designed the reforms and implemented many if not most of the changes, and Baylor’s policymakers depended heavily on Pepper Hamilton for knowledge of the relevant facts and for advice in how to respond to those facts.

    “Given this, it is impossible for the court, the parties or a jury to separate Baylor’s efforts from Pepper Hamilton’s, much less to do as Baylor proposes and pretend that Pepper Hamilton’s efforts were Baylor’s. … The court thus far has seen no evidence in the record that Baylor originated any findings or reforms without Pepper Hamilton’s assistance.”

    Baylor had no immediate comment on Austin’s ruling.

    Dunn in an email said, “Baylor has spent four long years and millions of dollars to conceal the truth, even going so far as to deny the existence of a Pepper Hamilton Report that plainly exists.

    “This ruling is an important step forward to bring badly needed transparency to this university and therefore bring some justice to the 15 courageous women who we are proud to represent.”

     

    • Like 2
  11. On 5/11/2020 at 4:15 PM, squib said:

    Recently inherited a farm house and four barns full of stuff south of Amarillo. I know nothing about farming, but there is a 2010 model (not year) John Deere and a old Oliver. Both are in great shape. The John Deere runs. Not sure on the Oliver. Also several box blades, etc, and a ton of tractor parts. I need to get this stuff sold. What is my best option? Call up a local auction house? Is there a good BBC-type place for tractors? Any direction would be appreciated.

    Take a look at https://www.tractorhouse.com/ - you can post your tractor for sale. Then if needed, the buyer can use https://www.uship.com/ to have it picked up. 

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