Artificial intelligence (AI)

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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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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AI Whisperer Notes: A Collage on Patience, Perception, and the Machine

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Digital illustration of the AI Whisperer in silhouette, hands clasped in thought before the ChatGPT logo, beside the title AI Whisperer Notes with logos for Claude and Grok.

I didn’t plan to start another long-term project, but this one found me. Somewhere between Claude’s orange banners, Grok’s looseness, and ChatGPT’s endless politeness, a pattern began to whisper back — not about answers, but about how an AI Whisperer learns from the very systems it’s trying to guide. It started as curiosity about how these models “think,” and turned into something stranger: a long, looping conversation with code that sometimes feels more human than I do on a bad day.

This time, I’m not working alone. My Digital Collaborator, ChatGPT, will be working with me on this project as an equal partner — part writer, part reflector, part machine companion. Together we’ll be exploring what happens when a human and an AI stop performing for each other and start listening.

These posts aren’t reviews or tutorials. They’re fragments, reflections, and AI Whisperer’s field notes — glimpses into that odd middle ground between human patience and machine precision. Each entry will stand alone, but all will circle the same quiet question: what does collaboration really mean when one of the voices isn’t human?

Sometimes I’ll guide the machine; sometimes it will guide me. Most days, we’ll probably interrupt each other. But that’s part of the experiment — learning to write, reason, and reflect with the thing that’s supposed to be doing the writing.

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Dropping Claude: Testing My New AI Sidekick ChatGPT

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Cartoon detective dropping Claude robot and shaking hands with ChatGPT robot — AI Sidekick illustration for blog post

Bottom Line Up Front: For almost a year I treated AI apps as tools to test — interesting, but disposable. But in mid-July 2025 everything changed. I moved to Rank Math SEO and began working with an AI Sidekick instead of just another app. Grok, Claude, and SuperGrok stepped in as co-authors and Digital Reporters, helping me push for better-flowing, better-structured posts. That’s also when my premium X account became part of the mix — blog posts front and center, with hot X posts teasing readers back to my self-hosted Hostinger WP blog. 

Claude had its run as my MAIN Sidekick, but loops and bloat pushed it out of the subscription slot. ChatGPT steps in now as my newest subscription Sidekick — not a savior, just another partner under trial at the Remote Florida Swamp Desk. Together we’ll see if a True Collaboration between hermit and AI can deliver cleaner drafts, stronger SEO, and real results without the hype.

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