Thursday, March 3, 2022

Last night I went to bed at 10pm, got up at 1am, again at 4:15 (by a calf cramp), finally at 6:30.

We left at 8:15 and took a Didi car to Cedimed Diagnostics on Calle 7. We quickly checked in, I paid 284,000 ($73), and Teresa was taken in back for her endoscopy. She came out an hour later with some initial results.

We went outside to Boulevard café where I had a café con leche and she had coffee with 2 chicken & vegetable empanadas.

We went across the street to Cedimed where I made an ATM withdrawal. Back across the street at Clinica Medellin we caught a taxi back to Envigado, arriving by 11:15.

We immediately went to bed and I fell asleep but was awakened at noon by a cramp in my right ankle. It didn’t go away until I put my foot on the floor.

My Weather Channel app claimed there would be rain between 2 and 2:30 then more rain after 5pm. I called a Didi and when I left the apt at 2pm the elevator was out of order for routine maintenance. I slowly walked down 3 flights and as I exited the parking garage there were a few heavy raindrops but by the time I exited the porteria they had stopped. The Didi driver took me to Viva Envigado.

I waited in line about 15 minutes to use the Davivienda ATM by Exito but it gave me the “Excede cupo disponible para retiro” message. I went up to the 2^nd floor of the mall and waited 10 minutes to use another Davivienda ATM. I was able to withdraw 1,020,000 pesos but it didn’t offer me the option to withdraw 2,000,000 pesos. Not enough to pay for the apt but enough to pay for my health insurance and the gym. I went to Bancolombia’s consignacion machine but today it wasn’t taking cash. Sigh!

On my way towards the metro exit I ran into Charles Turner and we chatted for a bit. He’s 68 and after his prostatectomy he reported having to wear a catheter for 3 months. Yikes!

I bought something for Teresa in Linea Estetica.

I had coffee in Santa Leña and texted Charles to join me. He never answered so maybe his number has changed.

I bought some groceries in Exito and put them in my GFS bag and returned to the apt by taxi.

Shortly after I returned, I realized I didn’t have my notebook with me. Inside was my information for paying for the apt, health insurance and gym. I know I had it with me when I left Santa Leña so I must have left it somewhere in Exito. Teresa offered to go with me to return to Exito but I told her I’m too tired. I managed to recreate the info I need to pay my bills. I could even recreate the notebook but I’ll ask at the Exito information office tomorrow.

Noticeable leaking today probably because of all the walking I did. And I’m a little sore.

Teresa told me she’s writing down all of our doctor’s appointments. Great idea. To test her I asked when my next appointment was. She replied, “March 8^th at 10am”. I replied, “how about March 10^th at 8am?”.  😊

My PipingRock order has shipped.

 

I mentioned I wrote to Chess.com. Here is my exact request, “Considering the war in Ukraine i think you should suspend RU players. If not at least do not pair me (GringoCO) with any as i refuse to play them.”

And here is their rather lengthy answer (if any reader would like to offer a reply, I would appreciate hearing it),

Hello, Terry! :)

Slava Ukraini!

Thank you so much for writing in during this time and with ideas like this. My name is Robert :)

The ability to filter opponents by country is something that has been requested many times, but I'm afraid we do not have this ability programmed into Chess.com. However, I am of course sending your comments to our devs to add more pressure.
Now, to be perfectly honest, one of the reasons we haven't implemented this suggested feature is quite simply because the ability to filter players by country would eventually not be limited to Russia, because once members realize we've built a way to do that, it will be requested as a permanent change and we would need to make the ability to filter any country and make that available for everyone.... As you can imagine, this would create quite the different experience for us all in the long run if our millions of members decide to block millions of other members because of actions the politicians in those countries take. Chess.com is a global Chess community, and being able to filter opponents by country would be counter to this spirit....

Clearly, MANY of the Russian people are AGAINST the current invasion of Ukraine. We are all struggling to do SOMETHING to help. And I'm about to vent a bit, so my apologies, but one of the friends I've made through working here is in Ukraine 60 miles from the Russian border. I've shared many a drink with him and we follow each other's games. The fact that he and his family are at risk is breaking my heart. Every time I see news about this I look for the name of his city. Every time he goes off of our messaging program I worry that he's not just signing off, but that he's been cut from infrastructure and that he might not be okay.
The staff here have been amazing. One of our guys in Hungary is offering his house as a place to stay. We've got food "go fund me" clones being set up.

Other international platforms that have banned Russian teams from competing (like FIFA and UEFA), are worth billions, and there is a much heavier interest and greater influence there than a chess site like ours.
The sad and frustrating reality is there's not a ton we can do. We can offer to pay for our employees' families to evacuate (we did).
We can put up a supportive article about Ukraine and her people (we did).
https://www.chess.com/blog/CHESScom/in-support-of-ukraine
We can put our weight behind charity drives to help the Ukrainian people: https://twitter.com/GMHikaru/status/1498464607735791616

The staff here have been amazing. One of our guys in Hungary is offering his house as a place to stay. We've got food "go fund me" clones being set up.

Another thing we could do, as you mentioned, is just block every Russian IP or every player with a Russian flag. Here's our thoughts so far about this.
1. This would be a moral stand only, it would not help the war effort. If anything,
2. The State Departments of the US and Canada and Europe have aimed their sanctions primarily at the Oligarchs waging and profiting from this effort. They have not aimed any at the Russian people themselves. If we were to block Russians from our site, we would be blocking the Russian people, not their leaders (who already have sophisticated VPN-like setups for avoiding this stuff). Maybe it would put some small amount of pressure for people to protest, and with every site doing such a thing, it might move the needle a little. Maybe.
3. We would block the Russians doing this sort of thing too:
https://www.axios.com/photos-people-protest-russia-war-against-ukraine-c7fecd0e-6dfe-436f-8959-7016797ceeca.html
It's important to note that the people on our site from certain countries are often the most western leaning in ideology, and while discussion is largely blocked on our main site from political discourse, people are getting information on events which they wouldn't otherwise have access too from State TV.
4. Bans on sports players and competitions are being used in general where "Glory to the State" could be garnered. For us, we think that doesn't mean our typical Russian user. If all sites would decide to block their Russian members, they might have no access to alternative information about the current situation, other than the information shared in their local media. The public discussion in this is largely banned, but a lot of information is seeping into Russia from the Internet!

Another suggestion was to change the Russian flag to the IOC flag.

Please write back and let me know your thoughts. These decisions are too big, the stakes to high, for anyone to think they just know the answers right away and shoot into the blackness hoping for the best. We want to make the best decisions we can, and that means we have to take into account all kinds of different ideas from all kinds of different perspectives. If you can write me a good one, I can certainly make sure it gets read to our owner.

I hope you and yours are safe right now.

 

The New York Times’ 7-day average of new daily infections and deaths has the US with 61,118  ð 58,132 ð 55,034 new cases and 1,915 ð 1,818 ð 1,672 new deaths.

Per Medellin Guru, as of yesterday, Colombia has a total of 1,218 ð 1,222 ð 1,051 newly reported cases with 87 ð 45 ð 40 newly reported deaths. I won’t be providing the new case statistics for Medellin and Envigado.

 

Funny pix of the day