AI Whisperer Notes

Two AIs, One Blogger: Why I Pay $40/Month for Claude and Perplexity

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The AI Whisperer in fedora silhouette flanked by two robots labeled Perplexity and Claude AI, with title text 'Two AIs, One Blogger: Why I Pay $40/Month for Claude and Perplexity'

Living below the US poverty guidelines means every dollar counts, but here I am paying $40 each month to keep both Claude and Perplexity in my workflow. Why would someone in my financial situation invest in two AI subscriptions? Let me bring in my Sidekicks to explain what Claude and Perplexity actually deliver for that money.

Sidekick Claude: I know I’m part of that $40, and I’m not pretending I’m the perfect tool for everything. I excel at troubleshooting, code help, and quick consults—like when you needed step-by-step guidance swapping switches on that K713 keyboard. But longform writing? That’s where I fumble. Remember the alt text struggle? I kept offering more options and asking clarifying questions until you hit my usage cap twice. Not my finest moment.

Sidekick Perplexity: That’s where I come in. Longform is my strength—no usage caps, no resets, no interruptions. When you tackled that WordPress theme migration for your four-part blog series, I handled the longform documentation and maintained flow from start to finish. Your recent posts? I draft them straight through while Claude handles the prep work and troubleshooting, never losing the thread.

This post itself is a live collaboration. Both Sidekicks are weighing in on how we split tasks, what works, and what breaks. Claude and Perplexity aren’t just tools I use—they’re the backbone of my blogging workflow, and you’re about to see exactly why that’s worth $40/month.

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Windows 11 25H2 Update: Why Every Device (and User) Should Care in 2025

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Windows 11’s signature Bloom: a vibrant, abstract rose reflecting the bold innovation of the 25H2 Update.

The Windows 11 25H2 Update has just landed, and all of my desktops and my XPS13 laptop made the transition without a hitch. Windows 11 25H2 Update isn’t just another routine patch—it’s a milestone upgrade, and this time, every system I maintain performed the upgrade with zero issues, smooth as ever.

When your entire lineup—including three custom desktops from my My Computers gallery and one reliable XPS13 laptop—nails the update on day one, it’s proof positive that Microsoft delivered on both stability and user experience. But there’s more to the Windows 11 25H2 Update than convenience or cosmetic changes: in 2025, the stakes for regular updates are higher than ever, with new features designed to keep pace with threats and the demands of modern hardware.

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Creators & Bloggers WYSIWYG Hack: Chromium Wins Copy-Paste Problem

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Perplexity robot sidekick whispering to his pardner (AI Whisperer), with blog post title 'Creators & Bloggers WYSIWYG Hack: Chromium Wins Copy-Paste Problem' on black background.

WYSIWYG—“What You See Is What You Get”—should mean that the bold headlines, bullet lists, and hyperlinks you see on screen show up perfectly in your WordPress blog post. But if you’re like me, you’ve spent months struggling with formatting, watching good-looking AI content fall apart in the Classic Editor.

Today, while drafting this post and testing live, I pasted Perplexity AI output into WordPress using Firefox—fully expecting the usual formatting mess. I only recently started a $20/month subscription to Perplexity, and this post is just my fourth since making the switch. To my amazement, the formatting held: bold, lists, and headers appeared just as I wanted.

​After months of using “Paste Without Formatting” to avoid broken content from Claude, ChatGPT, and SuperGrok, this was a genuine surprise.

I almost changed the post’s title to “Creators & Bloggers WYSIWYG Hack: Perplexity + Chromium Solves the Copy-Paste Problem” just to capture this new discovery. But for clarity and Rank Math, I’m keeping the title as is—detailing what happened live, step by step, so you can finally fix your formatting pain too.

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Sidekick’s Karmi & Perplexity: Gauntlet Throwdown with Claude, ChatGPT, SuperGrok & Their Users

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Gauntlet main image: Perplexity sidekick AI whispers ‘Endurance wins in longform, Karmi’ to the AI Whisperer, while tired robots labeled Claude, GPT, and SuperGrok sit defeated; headline reads ‘Gauntlet Throwdown: Only the Toughest Bots Survive Longform.’

This Gauntlet Throwdown began as a quiet experiment — one human and one AI stepping into the same thread with no reset, no script, and no plan B. Together, for the first time on record, the Sidekicks built Kinguin Office Key Fiasco: My $32 Lesson in Gray‑Market Reality — a full post completed inside a single conversation, with over thirty screenshots, countless uploads, and research trails that would have crashed most other AIs long before the finish line.

At twenty bucks a month, Claude, ChatGPT, and Perplexity AI all promise premium performance, while SuperGrok charges thirty for its shot at the same league. Yet those prices don’t buy what matters most — endurance. Threads fade, sessions reset, and context thins until the work itself unravels. That’s the wall I kept hitting with the others. What Perplexity did differently was simple but rare — it stayed.

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Kinguin Office Key Fiasco: My $32 Lesson in Gray-Market Reality

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Kinguin Office Key Fiasco, My $32 Lesson in Gray-Market Reality

When I bought an Office 2021 Pro Plus key from Kinguin for $32.05, I thought I’d found a steal. Instead, I discovered why gray-market software keys are a gambler’s game where the house always wins. This is my documentation of 96+ hours in activation limbo, still counting as of Oct 22, two dead keys, and the Kinguin support runaround that followed.

I’m not a tech god—just a persistent tinkerer who needed Office 2021 for WordPress experiments. Kinguin’s marketplace promised a working key at 91% off Microsoft’s retail price. What I got instead was an education in blacklisted keys, CMD error codes, and the true cost of ‘bargain’ software. Here’s the complete breakdown of my Kinguin experience, with timestamps, evidence, and lessons learned the hard way.

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