Yesterday was a mess. It was the first time I was having a major outing since coming back to Lagos and I just have to say this; it reminded me of the reason I don't like going out to begin with. Being a remote worker, I’m blessed with the privilege of not having to step out of the house unless I absolutely have to. However, yesterday, I found out that I absolutely had to get out of the house if I was going to get what I wanted.
You see, I’m setting up my workstation here in my new place in Lagos. Setting it up so that I can make my work seamless and more enjoyable for me. Because if there is one thing I love, it’s working in an enjoyable and enabling environment. That is one thing that makes me enjoy it a whole lot.
So, a lot of money has gone into this little project of mine, but I’m still not done yet. One major step I decided to take was to get myself a monitor. Working with a monitor has proven to be a major upgrade. With an external monitor, mouse, and keyboard, I can do my work more comfortably without having to haunch over my laptop.
So, I went to Ikeja yesterday, Computer Village to be precise to get myself a monitor. However, I wasn’t just going to get one, I also wanted to look at my HDMI slot. It’s been pretty shaky for a while and I needed to see if it could be fixed. So, I had two missions at Ikeja. My first plan was to fix the laptop and then get the monitor.
However, I was hit with a major realization. On my way to Ikeja, I realized how much Lagos had changed over the past few years that I had been away. There were now flyovers, railroads, and major constructions, it was nothing like I could remember. It was as if I was learning the place all over again. But then, it wasn’t that bad because I could still pick out some major landmarks that were still in place.
Getting to Computer Village, I was even more startled by the changes there. So many things had changed, but again, that didn’t stop me from getting to meet the engineer I had come for. When I finally tracked him down and told him my issues, he promised to get done with it in two hours. After all, what was the big deal with fixing an HDMI port?
I left it behind and went in search of the monitor I was looking to buy. I had in mind an HDMI frameless monitor that was at least 27 inches. I thought that with N60k, I would get what I wanted. After all, it wasn’t like I was trying to buy a TV. Well, I was wrong! When I got there, all I heard was N110k, N120k… the least amount of frameless monitor was N90k and that was just 25”.
Well, I had no idea they would be this expensive. They also came in various classes, some in 2k, some in 4k. The 4k were the most expensive and the traders were just championing them as if they were the next best thing after agege bread. Clearly, I was way out of my budget if I was going to keep looking for a frameless monitor. So, I had to try something else, I expanded my search and started going to LED monitors. These ones weren’t frameless but they were also energy-saving and had some sort of color. They were cheaper and as such well within my budget.
I’m not a programmer nor a web developer, and while I’m planning to go deeper into gaming eventually, it’s not today. So, I was sure that the monitor I was getting would work well for me, whether or not it was in 4k. Maybe later on, I would simply upgrade to a better one. But for now, I got what I wanted, a good monitor that was well within my budget.
Once that was cleared, I took the monitor back to the engineer who was fixing my HDMI slot. By then, he told me that it was all fixed and all that was needed was to test it. However, when we plugged it into the monitor, it refused to project. Mind you, the monitor had already been tested back where I bought it, so I was certain it was working. However, the laptop just didn’t project, no matter how many times I tried to get it to work.
We tried another laptop on the monitor and it projected easily without any hassle. But coming back to my laptop, the projection was just not happening. This was a complication I had not envisioned. The engineer claimed that it wasn’t an HDMI issue, but a software issue, and I needed to format it. He gave me directions to where that could happen. So, I picked up my laptop and my monitor and made my way over there. I spent another hour there while the guy looked around it.
In the end, he found nothing and told me that it wasn’t a software issue, it was an HDMI issue. “What did I do to deserve all this?”
At that point, I got fed up and simply packed up my things. It was almost 5:30 pm by then and I just wanted to go home. I was going to figure out some other way to fix the HDMI issue, or I’d find another engineer. Meanwhile, I needed to get home. The last thing I wanted was to be fighting in the night traffic while hurling a laptop and a monitor along.
By the time I got back home, it was dark and I was exhausted. I was mad because I had only achieved 50% of what I wanted. However, I was happy a bit because it made me closer to achieving my goal. Before the end of this week, I’d finish up everything I have to do and my workstation would be ready. Hopefully.
Anyway, all in all, I’m glad with how far I’ve come. It’s not been easy, and it’s definitely taken a lot from me. But I’m almost there, I’m almost at the end. These are part of the things I wanted for this year and I can say that for a year that’s only ten days old, I’m definitely off to a good start.
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