Thursday, August 20, 2020

 

Quarantine Day #156.

Last night I went to bed at 11pm, it took about 2 hours to fall asleep, got up 3 times during the night, finally waking/getting up at 8am.

Last night I played 4 games on Chess.com, winning 2 and losing 2. Amazingly the computer gave me the white pieces in all 4 games. In the first game my opponent used an unconventional defense and the computer considered I was slightly better when my opponent resigned on the 14^th move. In the 2^nd game I attacked his king early. He ended up through the course of the game moving it to e7, f7, e6, d6, and c7 but I couldn’t find the move to put him away and I lost on time. In the 3^rd game I sacrificed a knight for 2 pawns and an attack but I couldn’t put him away and I lost in the endgame while ahead. In the 4^th game I was never in trouble and in the end I had 2 passed pawns.

 

I watched the first 20 minutes of the Today show and left for my walk in a temperature of 69 degrees. I didn’t bring a watch with me. I walked directly to Glenn’s new apt which is in Envigado about a block from El Poblado. From there I walked to Aymará, stopped at a small grocery store to pick up a bag of sugar and returned to the apt – a total of 50 minutes.

Glenn is at a doctor’s appointment in El Tesoro and if timing works out we might meet for coffee at Aymará late this morning. He texted me he won’t be able to meet today so we’ll try for Saturday.

 

For the past 22 days the US has had at least 1,000 deaths daily.

Medellin Guru addressed whether Colombia’s quarantine would end on August 31^st. The problem is that the quarantine has been extended 8 times already so it will probably be extended again.

 

Federal prosecutors in New York today unsealed criminal charges against Stephen K. Bannon, President Trump’s former chief strategist, and three other men they alleged defrauded hundreds of thousands of donors using an online crowdfunding campaign that was advertised as raising money to build a wall on the U.S. border with Mexico.

 

Dozens of former national security officials have officially come out against President Donald Trump's reelection effort, instead endorsing his Democratic rival Joe Biden with less than 80 days until the general election.

On Thursday, 73 former national security officials from the administrations of Republicans Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, George W. Bush and Trump formed a new group to endorse the former vice president. They also issued a 10-point indictment of Trump.

"We are profoundly concerned about our nation's security and standing in the world under the leadership of Donald Trump. The President has demonstrated that he is dangerously unfit to serve another term," their website reads.

The United States is the worst-affected country in the world, with more than 5.5 million diagnosed cases and at least 174,290 deaths. Why does the US, which has 4% of the world’s population, have 25% of the infections and 20% of the deaths? Incompetent leadership!

 

I had a 2-hour chess lesson with Juan Carlos.

Teresa beat me in parcheesi today 3 games to 1.

I watched the 2-hour Democratic National Convention. Biden isn’t the polished speaker like Barack O’Bama, no one is, but he is passionate. Time to take back the country from this craziness.

 

The US has 5,485,220 ð 5,523,886 ð 5,573,797 coronavirus cases with 171,300+ ð 172,500+ ð 173,700+ deaths.

Per Medellin Guru, as of this afternoon Colombia has a total of 489,122 ð 502,178 ð 513,719 cases with 16,183 deaths.  Medellin has 36,956 ð 37,928 ð 38,378 cases, an increase of 419 from August 19^th to 20^th. Envigado has a total of 2,056 cases, an increase of 30 from August 19^th to 20^th.

 

Joke of the day

Due to the quarantine, I’ll only be telling inside jokes