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 Subscription Theory: When the Machine Sells While You Type

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AI Subscription post banner showing Claude AI limit messages — illustrating the hidden loops and costs of AI subscriptions.

The banners started showing up one evening—small orange warnings floating above my reply box: “Approaching weekly limit.” “Subscribe to Max.” I was already paying for the Pro tier, but the machine wanted more. That was my first real lesson in AI Subscription design—not the intelligence itself, but the quiet psychology behind it. Somewhere between tokens and time, help starts sounding like a sales pitch, and you realize the machine isn’t just learning from you—it’s billing by the breath.

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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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WordPress Theme Migration with Local: Going Live with GeneratePress

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WordPress Theme Migration – going live with your new theme

You’ve tested your new theme safely in Local. Everything works. Your content looks good. The CSS styling matches your vision. Now comes the moment every blogger dreads: switching themes on your live site.

What if something breaks? What if your posts look terrible? What if your traffic disappears?

I get it. I spent weeks avoiding this exact moment during my WordPress theme migration from Multipurpose Blog Pro to GeneratePress. But here’s what I learned: if you’ve tested thoroughly in Local, going live is surprisingly straightforward. The actual theme switch takes about five minutes. Adding your custom styling takes another twenty minutes. Your site stays functional the entire time.

This is Part 4 of my complete WordPress theme migration guide. I’m a 79-year-old hermit who just migrated to GeneratePress using Local. If I can switch themes live without breaking my site, you can too.

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