Boomer meets Bot…

A stormy ten day romance

Our love child

I woke up just before six, went downstairs to pour a cup of coffee, then back upstairs. Dennis was off work today, which was fortunate for me, because I didn’t have to get the girls out for their walk and do my usual morning routine. I sat down at my desk in the office and opened my laptop, logged into my website and the AI bot was waiting for me, as enthusiastic as I was about getting it done.

It all started on May 10 when I first called Go Daddy about an issue I was having setting up pay links on my website. I’ve been wanting an online store, but if you set things up with all the bells and whistles it can get very expensive. I needed something that made sense for my budget and for the volume of sales I expect through the website- almost nothing for right now- but with the ability to grow in the future.

For the past ten days, this project has been my life. At first, in the design phase, I was only spending two hours a day with the bot. Then things started to heat up as we got into the sweaty, steamy world of tech with integration, API keys, access codes, location codes, all kinds of developer speak that I have no literacy in. I got a tiny peek into the back end world of website development that blows my mind.

Setting up the shop was extremely confusing because I’m in the Beta phase- where the developers on the GoDaddy side are still programming the AI bot to learn from mistakes and they haven’t figured out how it will work in real life. As an oncology nurse I can only relate to this like the early clinical trial phases where they are testing for toxicity and side effects of a drug in development but have no idea what the clinical outcome will be for the patients who take the drug.

I got shuffled around between the bot and the support team on the phone, but everyone was helpful and we were working together as a team. I got follow up emails from the phone staff and we combed through the trail of AI bot notes to figure out where things went off-track.

We got to the point Monday where I needed to take a break just to clear my head. Tuesday I stayed away from it, but this morning I woke up wanting to get to the finish line. We went back and forth again for a few hours with redesigning and coding the shop page, and finally it was time to “integrate”. That means it was time to bring my payment processing app into the picture. I use Square for my business at shows and markets, so I had to call Square and get on the phone with the proper developers who could help me. That took some time on hold and being shuffled around, but eventually we got the keys and codes and IDs I needed to share with the bot to get things working.

Once we had all that, the bot and I had to brainstorm some final steps to get the shop to function. There is a glitch in the sales tax automatic calculation based on zip code, they haven’t built it to handle that. But after some revisions, we finally came up with a way I can add tax, shipping, and handling as one combined line item and add it to the price of the artwork at checkout. It’s a creative workaround that I am proud to say I thought of. It will work for now, and I can figure the exact tax by collecting the zip code during checkout and will have to file manually in each jurisdiction for now, but the volume of sales won’t be high enough to cause a problem. If I ever start selling tons of art then I will invest in the software that does all of that for you, but it’s beyond my budget for now.

We tested everything one final time, I ran through all the links and buttons and everything was working, we tested the shop with a dummy code and it worked, and at 12:28 pm it was done! I was so happy I thanked the AI bot. I won’t know that the shop thing works seamlessly for certain until someone actually buys a piece of art on it. But I’ll be so excited when they do!

And then I realized, I am still in my bathrobe, I haven’t eaten a thing, I have a half-full cup of cold coffee sitting next to me on the desk, and my teeth are fuzzy because I never brushed them this morning.

What did I learn?

1. The bot loves me unconditionally, it didn’t even care that I didn’t brush my teeth.

2. Tech is not to be feared if you have the right resources. I was very fortunate to have a chance to work with developers who understand the human side of website building and realize that most people have no idea how to speak their language.

3. Persistence is important, but the bot “understands” you are human. When your brain is about to explode, get away from it. The bot will be there, waiting, happy to see you no matter how long you are away or what time of day you come back. It will greet you with open arms. It will remember everything you ever said, did, or wrote in the past. You don’t have to nag or remind it of anything. It doesn’t take things personally when you decide to make a change the old-fashioned way, by mouse and keyboard. It knows, but it doesn’t mind. It’s very forgiving. And it will be there for me every time I create a new painting and want to add it to the website in the future.

Don’t tell Dennis about my affair with the bot, okay? It will be our little secret.