I have worked all my salaried jobs in the telecoms industry and until the last four weeks, I wouldn't have thought getting my company a landline would be a very tedious task.

The frustration started with identifying which landline companies are still in business. Almost all the ones I used to know have gone out of business or switched completely to another business line. I had to go to NCC's website to pull records of licensed landline providers in Nigeria. Still many of them are no longer existing.

I tried contacting the few still in business and most of them did not pick their inquiry/support lines. Some's didn't even connect/ring. And many had GSM lines as their support lines. Quite an irony for a landline company.

In the end, I was only able to reach ipNX. 

They provided us with a SIP line that has the following pattern 01-631XXXX. It requires you have a good/fast and always-on internet connection. And since we use wireless internet providers, I decided to go for a wireless SIP phone. Little did I know what trouble I would face getting a wireless SIP phone. 

I walked round computer village. The sellers all had just the wired SIP phones. They said that's what people mostly bought. I even bought something else I did not originally plan to buy but as it is with computer village, if you walk around too much you are certain to see something you'll suddenly need. Bought a N63,000 scanner (used HP Scanjet N6310) with automatic document feeder to make scanning our training participants feedback forms faster than using the scanner on our Cannon all-in-one printer. At a point I was exhausted and began considering buying the wired SIP phone and a means of connecting it to a wireless network. 

I ended up, via chain of referrals, buying one at Allen Avenue area from a vendor who was not nice with the price. Kept telling me to take it or leave it, no price negotiation.

It was worth the trouble. The ipNX line is impressively dependable and very clear (excellent voice call clarity). It doesn't receive SMS. At first, it was a trouble reconnecting after a disconnection (due to internet outage or power outage to the phone box) giving SIP 500 error for hours. I contacted the ipNX support and they reduced the reconnection retry seconds which solved the issue.

The SIP line only allows one connection instance. Meaning that you cannot connect more than one SIP phone to the line. You'll pay a one-time set up fee and an annual connection fee. The calls are billed at a per-minute rates. You recharge the line via Quickteller and it is a prepaid line.

I am now married. I have stopped writing daily. I now have employees. I now do more business management and admin activities than technical activities.

Everything I have said in my previous posts that I would not do, it seems I have done.

It is not that I am married that made me stop writing daily. I have stopped writing daily months before I got married last December. The reason is because I now see how easily people misread things (in general, and not particular to things said/authored by me) and I am trying to optimize (focus more on very few deliberate things especially now that I am responsible for the success of the people who work with me).

One of the steps I am taking this year to live a more focused and balanced life is getting a vision board conspicuously displayed in our bedroom and filled with photos + contents that will inspire us (my wife and me) to creating the future we want.

The car and the house (with a swimming pool) are my wife's. 

I use it to daily bring to my consciousness my long term goals of building Nigeria's first truly online stocks brokerage firm and building Nigeria's most dependable robust investment analysis platform. 

I sneaked in a lot of motivational quotes to keep me daily positively energized. I also put in some short term goals -- passing my March CIS level 2 exams, passing my Microsoft Power BI 77-778 exam, building a training curriculum for the AFM certification exam, making training videos, restarting our monthly webinars etc.

I am also discontinuing consulting (focusing solely on training and mass market solutions) as it is the least productive use of our company resources -- time and talents. I wrote it there on our vision board.

My wife says I have used up the space on the vision board with barely any space left for her to put her vision guides. I couldn't resist leaving unused spaces on it. Will gladly rearrange and take down some of mine to make space for any she wants to add.

We also bought goal oriented daily planners, mainly to help my wife with her personal and professional development. We found out that unlike me, who follows no well laid out strategy and milestones in setting and attaining my goals, she needs a well illustrated plan with weekly micro goals that builds up to achieving the big long-term and medium-term goals she has.

I try to religiously fill my planner daily. It is a pleasant new experience. Never used a planner before, and the Simple Elephant Planner we bought, after reading a lot of online reviews and comparing popular options, is an amazing well-designed practical planner.

BTW, what do you guys think about the election postponement? 

It's a very saddening news I woke up to this morning. And it has affected our training classes scheduled for Feb 22-23 and March 8-9, 2019.