Monday, Tim Arrives

content/blog/wk10day1.md

@@ -1,7 +1,82 @@
 ---
-title: "Week 10, Monday:"
+title: "Week 10, Monday: Tim Arrives!"
 date: 2024-09-30T21:55:00+02:00
-draft: true
 ---
 
-{{< image frame="true" width="17em" float="right" src="/img/headline/todo.png" alt="Credit: " >}}
+{{< image frame="true" width="17em" float="right" src="/img/headline/noraenpure-07.png" alt="Credit: Nora en Pure, YouTube" >}}
+
+The &Ouml;BB night trains (and in general, Austrian trains) are a bit fickle when it comes to
+punktuality. I heard that the Deutsche Bahn was barred entry to the Swiss railroad system due to
+their complete lack of timeliness. I hope that Tim's train arrives on time, though, because his
+original time was 08:39am on a Monday, and his new time was supposed to be 08:05am, but then also
+his train waggon which was a sleeper waggon was replaced with a _couchette_ waggon, and also the
+train had a 27 minute delay in Basel. 
+
+To be on time for any eventuality, I put the alarmclock at the completely invalid time of 07:10 so
+that I can be at the station for 08:05. Of course, this is completely uncalled for, because in a
+strange turn of events, the new arrival time of the train ends up being 08:35, in other words the
+original time but after the new earlier time which was "compensated for" by the delay in Basel. Get
+it?
+
+I pick up Tim at Zurich HB, and we make our way to our place. I give a tour of the house and ask
+about our activities this week. There's a few things we have planned (and Tim also has a few
+meetings in the evening), but since the original idea was to work out the flightsim issue I have, we
+get right to work.
+
+I have an unused Ryzen 7950X with PCIe v4 and NVME ready to rock. We dust off (quite literally) the
+cockpit, inspect its wiring, repatriate the raided USB hubs, and hook everything up. Nothing works.
+We install Windows 11 on it, which in itself is a pretty quick affair, and we get to installing
+X-Plane 10, which I bought in 2016 but originally comes from 2011, and is meant for "Windows Vista"
+and this WIndows called XP. I may have jynxed it by being thoroughly convinced it would not even
+work.
+
+My buddy Sabri has his PPL (_Private Pilot's License_) and is a big fan of Microsoft Flight
+Simulator. Looking at the situation, the Saitek flight controls I have do have support in MSFS
+version from 2004, 2014 and a new one is coming out in 2024! I try my very very best to purchase
+this game on the Microsoft Store, but it is being a complete asshole to me, and refuses to take my
+money, saying, and I quote "Your country is not the same as the Microsoft Store country", with a
+button "click here" which goes, and I kid you not, to "support.microsoft.com" **landing page**, I
+mean: how the hell am I supposed to figure this out if you give me absolutely no hint on what my
+country really is (could be NL, BE, US, CH), or what a "Store country" even means. Sheesh. This is
+why I'm so happy that Tim is here, as an emotional support animal, he is less pissy when it comes to
+Microsoft, and he relieves me of my misery. Things will be fine.
+
+In the afternoon, we go shopping a little bit. We need to get some fancier food (cheeses, truffles,
+and so on), but for today, Tim is making dinner. It'll be salmon, fried in a garlic infused olive
+oil, capers, white wine and fettucini pasta. It's delicious! Marina prohibits Tim from throwing away
+the fried garlic, as we will be nomming on that separately. With the rest of the white wine, we
+enjoy a meal together.
+
+Every now and again one of us goes downstairs to insert the next DVD for scenery in X-Plane. But we
+also enjoy each others' company and open a Faustino _Gran Reserva_, which has a super taste. As
+X-Plane is finished installing, it promptly tells me it has an upgrade. As I click on the 'upgrade'
+button, the machine freezes and reboots. Oh boy. I do complete this upgrade though, and low and
+behold, it starts up and finds the yoke, rudder and quadrant! But, all the radio and instrument
+panels are still dead.
+
+After messing around with the analog joystick channels (switching rudder, switching throttle), we
+manage to take off in a Cessna 172S. As Tim climbs out, the simulator crashes and some super helpful
+(not) nvidia driver popup tells us to go get help, on support.nvidia.com again, but this time at
+least it shows some cryptic error code, which we find is utterly useless. The helpful suggestions
+are 'reinstall the driver' or 'reboot the machine' or 're-seat the video card'. None of this helps.
+
+At around 23:00 or so, we give up; the flight sim time between crashes is not even enough to get
+into a circuit around an airport, and none of the instruments work. We're disappointed and punt
+until tomororow. Instead, we sit upstairs and Marina joins us for a little while. Tim and I drool
+over an idea for next year to rent a plane (Tim has his license) and fly the ring of IPng, landing
+at each city and doing "maintenance". In total, that would be about 1'800km or so. It would be an
+adventure, done right.
+
+## Pictures of the Day
+
+{{< gallery-category >}}
+  {{< gallery-photo fn="2024-09-30/IMG_1693.JPG" caption="The train timetable at Zurich HB, it's main station, in Zurich, Switzerland" >}}
+  {{< gallery-photo fn="2024-09-30/IMG_1699.JPG" caption="Tim and I are starting to install Windows 11 in order to install X-Plane 10 and Microsoft Flightsimulator X, using the Saitek cockpit" >}}
+  {{< gallery-photo fn="2024-09-30/IMG_1701.JPG" caption="Tim made a fabulous dinner with salmon, fettucini, garlic and capers" >}}
+  {{< gallery-photo fn="2024-09-30/IMG_1702.JPG" caption="After dinner we celebrated each other's company with a Faustino Gran Reserva" >}}
+  {{< gallery-photo fn="2024-09-30/IMG_1703.JPG" caption="Tim is plotting a route for us to fly the IPng Ring with a plane next year, that'll be fun!" >}}
+  {{< gallery-photo fn="2024-09-30/route.png" caption="Tim is plotting a route for us to fly the IPng Ring with a plane next year, that'll be fun!" >}}
+{{< /gallery-category >}}
+
+{{< gallery-modal >}}
+{{< gallery-script >}}