Artificial intelligence (AI)

From Big In‑Stores to Zenni Online‑Only: Learning to Be My Own Optician (Sorta)

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Five pairs of eyeglasses from big in‑store shops and Zenni online‑only, used in my journey to be my own optician.

I’m not an optician, but when you start ordering glasses online, you suddenly have to pretend to be one. You’re the one picking frame size, deciding between single‑vision, bifocals, trifocals, and progressives, and hoping it all works once it lands on your face. You still need a real eye exam and a real optician for a good prescription and PD, but after that, it’s you, a website, and a credit card.

Last year I spent almost a thousand dollars on frames and lenses after cataract surgery. I wanted to celebrate finally getting it done, ditch the bare‑bones Walmart 9.99–13.99 specials, and try progressive lenses for the first time. This year I’m in the “why did I spend that much?” phase and looking hard at cheaper online options — with Zenni ending up as my main test case.

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Tello Mobile: How I Cut My Phone Bill by $30 a Month

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Tello Mobile $10 per month 2GB unlimited minutes plan screenshot showing Build Your Own Plan options.

Tello Mobile caught my attention when Perplexity AI suggested it as a way to slash my monthly phone bill — and it delivered. I was on a big‑name network, paying around forty‑five dollars a month with taxes and fees included, and barely scratching 200MB of data thanks to fiber WiFi and WiFi calling at home. Something had to give.

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Grokipedia vs Wikipedia: Can Musk’s AI Encyclopedia Beat the Liberal Gatekeepers?

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Grokipedia vs Wikipedia – AI encyclopedia versus traditional online encyclopedia illustration.

Grokipedia vs Wikipedia is exactly the kind of clash you’d expect in 2025 and beyond: an AI‑generated encyclopedia from Elon Musk’s xAI taking a direct swing at what many see as a Democrat‑leaning, establishment‑policed Wikipedia. If you’ve spent years watching Wikipedia tilt on politics, culture wars, and “approved narratives,” the mere existence of Grokipedia feels like that same Drudge‑to–Citizen Free Press moment for reference sites—only this time, the jump isn’t just editorial, it’s AI vs human.

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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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