Wednesday, uetliberg, steak, radeon

content/blog/wk10day3.md

@@ -1,32 +1,102 @@
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 title: "Week 10, Wednesday: Exploring Zurich with Tim"
 date: 2024-10-02T21:55:00+02:00
-draft: true
 ---
 
 {{< image frame="true" width="17em" float="right" src="/img/headline/bala.png" alt="Credit: Bala DNB Mixes, YouTube" >}}
 
+Today the weather is supposed to be overcast, but dry -- knock on wood. I think it's a good idea to
+do a little tour of Zurich city, and take in the sights. Tim and I take the train to Zurich at
+10:25, and we start off from the Zurich main station tracking the river _Limmat_ upstream towards
+the lake. Here, there's a lot of old historic buildings to enjoy. One of the first places we go is
+up the walkway to a vestige lookout point at Lindenhof. From here we can see the east side of the
+city over Limmat. We plot a path through Niederdorf and along all of the architecture this city has
+to offer.
+
+Zurich has a few churches, notably the [[Sankt
+Peter](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Peter,_Z%C3%BCrich)] with its large face clock spanning 8.7
+meters and is the largest clock face in Europe. There's also
+[[Fraum&uuml;nster](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fraum%C3%BCnster)] with its beautiful copper roof,
+and the larger [[Grossm&uuml;nster](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grossm%C3%BCnster)] church with
+its two domes. We take a look inside the Grossm&uuml;nster and admire its church organ, and then
+walk along lake Zurich and into the city again.
+
+I have an idea, seeing it's lunch time, we should go eat a _Kanonenputzer_ (English: Cannon
+cleaner) at the _Zeughauskeller_ at Paradeplatz. This is a super touristy place, but often times
+locals eat here also because the food is really really good. In this place, we grab an amber beer,
+order a 50cm (20") sausage, r&ouml;sti and sauerkraut. It really hits the spot for me, and I love
+having visitors around because it makes for the perfect excuse to visit Zeughauskeller.
+
+Marina mentioned that there's a _pop-up_ museum of Breitling, a swiss watch maker, in town. We
+stumble across it at the Rennweg. A friendly bouncer greets us as we walk through the door. Inside,
+we take a look and there's a staircase down. We take the stairs and in the corner of his eye, TIm
+sees somebody sprinting at us waving his hands and chewing on a sandwich. Maybe we should be paying?
+Either way, downstairs we start looking at the history of this watchmaker, and the guy has swallowed
+his food and comes to talk - the museum is indeed free, but they'd like us to register and leave our
+name and e-mail address. That's a little price to pay for all these beautiful time pieces.
+
+From our place in Br&uuml;ttisellen, I have shown Tim a radio tower on _Uetliberg_ our local hill to
+the west of Zurich. It has two towers, one of which has a plateau some ten meters above the ground,
+with stunning views. Tim is in! We take the _Uetlibergbahn_ train up from the 410 meters or so of
+Zurich city, top the 870 meters of Uetliberg. It's a bit colder up here! But we have our jacket and
+(Nora!) sweater to help keep us warm. From here, we can see all the way to the Alps in the South,
+the Bodensee up North, we can see Zurich airport, the big white dome of the Masoala forest of the
+Zurich Zoo, and it's overall a really nice trip up.
+
+At about 15:35 we decide to make our descent to Zurich and onwards to the house. There's a package
+for me when I get home: four MPA linecards for IP-Max have arrived, in a huge box with boxes, as per
+standard operating procedure the volume to goods ratio is off the charts. All of the packaging gets
+discarded, and I put the MPAs in the IP-Max stash in IPng's serverroom.
+
+Dinnertime rolls around, and tonight I get my favorite: a 2.3kg filet of _Limousin_ beef. This stuff
+is simply divine! With it, I make baked potatoes in the oven and some steamed veggies. But of
+course, the main piece is this wonderful barbecued steak with chicago seasoning rub. Because it's a
+tip, it's thicker on one side and decidedly thinner on the other - this means for those of us who
+like _saignant_ (me) or _medium-rare_ (Tim, Quinn) or _medium_ (Marina), I only have to make one
+piece and the rest sorts itself. The steak comes out perfect.
+
+{{< image src="/img/arc.png" width="9em" float="left" alt="story arc" >}}
+
+Now it's 21:00 and I am looking at my watch literally every three minutes, because the _Story Arc_
+of Tim's visit will soon continue. You see, the order we placed for the video card was at 00:30 last
+night (technically, today!) and they've said they will flash deliver this unit between 21:00 and
+22:00 today. As we hang out at the dinner table, at 21:30 on the dot, the courrier rocks up with my
+USB hubs and video card. Yaay!! We install it and take a screenshot of us de-installing nVIDIA and
+installing RADEON drivers. We nailed it - MSFS starts up and plops us in a cockpit with working
+radio, navigation, switch panels and instrument panels. The whole nine yards works! We spend the
+rest of the day flying from Zurich to D&uuml;bendorf and Fehraltorf; and from Eindhoven to Breda. We
+fly in a Cessna 172 (with navigation!), a Cessna 152 (old school), and a Diamond DA40NG (with glass
+cockpit). 🥰
+
+Since we had three USB 7-port hubs, and one of them was suspect, we _also_ fix the hardware issue.
+We replace 3x7 hubs with 2x10 USB v3 hubs, and all ten of the FIPs come to life. Instrument panels
+a-plenty, I am super happy: we've made it! But the night is late (with which I mean 03:30) and we've
+had so much fun bouncing around here, that we still keep one small but important task for tomorrow:
+enabling all the switches for fuel pump, mags, pitot tube, cabin and carb heat, and so on. That
+whole panel doesn't do very much at the moment, and we just keep it as-is with the engine running at
+the start of the sim.
+
 ## Pictures of the Day
 
 {{< gallery-category >}}
-  {{< gallery-photo fn="2024-10-02/IMG_1727.JPG" caption="" >}}
+  {{< gallery-photo fn="2024-10-02/IMG_1727.JPG" caption="A selfie of Tim and I on the Lindenhof lookout, with behind us the Limmat at Niederdorf" >}}
-  {{< gallery-photo fn="2024-10-02/IMG_1729.JPG" caption="" >}}
+  {{< gallery-photo fn="2024-10-02/IMG_1729.JPG" caption="A picture of Sankt Peter church with a very large clockface. I think they're compensating" >}}
-  {{< gallery-photo fn="2024-10-02/IMG_1730.JPG" caption="" >}}
+  {{< gallery-photo fn="2024-10-02/IMG_1730.JPG" caption="This is Fraum&uuml;nster including its church and tower." >}}
-  {{< gallery-photo fn="2024-10-02/IMG_1731.JPG" caption="" >}}
+  {{< gallery-photo fn="2024-10-02/IMG_1731.JPG" caption="This rhino was a gift from Credit Suisse to the city of Zurich" >}}
-  {{< gallery-photo fn="2024-10-02/IMG_1732.JPG" caption="" >}}
+  {{< gallery-photo fn="2024-10-02/IMG_1732.JPG" caption="We cheers with an amber beer at Zeugkeuskeller in Zurich, Switzerland" >}}
-  {{< gallery-photo fn="2024-10-02/IMG_1733.JPG" caption="" >}}
+  {{< gallery-photo fn="2024-10-02/IMG_1733.JPG" caption="Our meal is a Kanonenputzer, which is a 500mm long pork sausage with mustard. As a side, we have r&ouml;sti and sauerkraut." >}}
-  {{< gallery-photo fn="2024-10-02/IMG_1735.JPG" caption="" >}}
+  {{< gallery-photo fn="2024-10-02/IMG_1735.JPG" caption="We stop by the Breitling pop-up museum at Rennweg. Here, the guy panics a bit as we elude his welcome (he was eating a sandwich), but we're still allowed in. Thanks, Breitling-guy!" >}}
-  {{< gallery-photo fn="2024-10-02/IMG_1738.JPG" caption="" >}}
+  {{< gallery-photo fn="2024-10-02/IMG_1738.JPG" caption="A the top of the Uetliberg transmission tower, we overlook the city and the lake and the Alps. It's windy up here, but beautiful views, despite the overcast weather" >}}
-  {{< gallery-photo fn="2024-10-02/IMG_1740.JPG" caption="" >}}
+  {{< gallery-photo fn="2024-10-02/IMG_1740.JPG" caption="There is also a Swisscom transmission tower here with a glass floor one third of the way up, where people used to have their point-to-point transmission into specific places in the city, mostly for news purposes." >}}
-  {{< gallery-photo fn="2024-10-02/IMG_1741.JPG" caption="" >}}
+  {{< gallery-photo fn="2024-10-02/IMG_1741.JPG" caption="A panoramic view as seen from the transmission tower on top of Uetliberg, we are 900m elevation here" >}}
-  {{< gallery-photo fn="2024-10-02/IMG_1742.JPG" caption="" >}}
+  {{< gallery-photo fn="2024-10-02/IMG_1742.JPG" caption="The train down Uetliberg makes a few stops and is doing mostly regenerative braking as it slides down the mountain side" >}}
-  {{< gallery-photo fn="2024-10-02/IMG_1744.JPG" caption="" >}}
+  {{< gallery-photo fn="2024-10-02/IMG_1744.JPG" caption="IP-Max got a delivery of a few MPA 4x10G cards for their ASR9k fleet. They go into the stash!" >}}
-  {{< gallery-photo fn="2024-10-02/IMG_1745.JPG" caption="" >}}
+  {{< gallery-photo fn="2024-10-02/IMG_1745.JPG" caption="I am proud to report that this is the very first bottle of wine that I manage to open with this hideous bottle opener." >}}
-  {{< gallery-photo fn="2024-10-02/IMG_1747.JPG" caption="" >}}
+  {{< gallery-photo fn="2024-10-02/IMG_1747.JPG" caption="The beef filet as it's grilling on the barbecue. This is ~1'050 grams, just enough for two (j/k)" >}}
-  {{< gallery-photo fn="2024-10-02/IMG_1750.JPG" caption="" >}}
+  {{< gallery-photo fn="2024-10-02/IMG_1750.JPG" caption="Marina magically became magnetic after our meal. She can now stick potato chip bags onto her hand. How cool is that?" >}}
-  {{< gallery-photo fn="2024-10-02/IMG_1751.JPG" caption="" >}}
+  {{< gallery-photo fn="2024-10-02/IMG_1751.JPG" caption="The courier dropped off the RADEON video card and two USB hubs. Yaay!" >}}
-  {{< gallery-photo fn="2024-10-02/IMG_1754.JPG" caption="" >}}
+  {{< gallery-photo fn="2024-10-02/IMG_1754.JPG" caption="It would be my absolute pleasure to toss that nVIDIA crap and install RADEON instead. And: it works a charm" >}}
-  {{< gallery-photo fn="2024-10-03/IMG_1758.JPG" caption="" >}}
+  {{< gallery-photo fn="2024-10-03/IMG_1758.JPG" caption="Tim is on final at LSMD (D&uuml;bendorf Military airport) with our flight simulator, now that it actually works!!" >}}
 {{< /gallery-category >}}
 
 {{< gallery-modal >}}