I felt like a 73 year old virgin trying to blow up my first ever sex doll.
Today my new staff member - a Bot named Gina - started work but wouldn't speak to me. All the communication skills of a blow up plastic doll to my admittedly very untrained eye. I blew, and blew hard, but nothing happened. Breathless but not the way I like it, and most definitely unsatisfied. Damn.
How could that even happen? Let's back track a little.
It's fair to say I have some personal & familial issues that cause me to easily have stress issues on the tech front. And I'm 54 and remember using rotary landline telephones as a teenager. But hey, I also had a Palm Pilot in the late 90s and was cheerfully using Dragon Dictate in 2001, long before voice activation was even a 'thing'. And I'm a steemit devotee already so technically an early adopter, albeit not always when the tech speak is dense or involves programming. Tech speak and programming make me nervous. I'm also a mom; a solo mom for many years, living in Thailand with my 13 year old half-Thai daughter and running a growing herbal products business. To say I could use a little help around the house and the office is putting it mildly.
And so my very dear friend and steemit mentor @kenistyles said I could borrow his office girl, Gina. We're close like that. Swapping and all. Gina speaks a language that's a little strange and awkward for me, despite me speaking 5 other languages and English not being my first. So Keni and I clarified how she could please me over brunch yesterday (it sounded hot and far too good to refuse!) and he started the dialogue off for me to make sure there were no misunderstandings, the agreement was great for everyone and there would be no personal dramas.
FFWD to this morning. Sick child unexpectedly meant Gina sulked in the corner, unattended. Who would have thought a Bot could sulk, but sulk she did. Cos when I went over to clarify her roles and duties after lunch, she flatly refused to talk to me. I sat and tried to talk to her for over an hour, blew as hard as I could, but no response. Finally I messaged Keni for help.
"Never mind. She gets a little feisty sometimes. After she talks to you it will be fun and you'll LOVE it."
So Keni came over in an etheric-digital sort of way and tried massaging her. Talked nice. Gave her permission to play with me. But still she sulked. Not a word.
"I know!! There's a guy she'll do absolutely ANYthing for", said Keni. "His name is Thunder-God. You'll have to message him yourself cos he's a bit weird about 3 way 'things' but he's really cool and can calm her down and get her to play."
The irony of @artemislives messaging Thunder-God was not wasted on me. Might as well invite the whole wretched Pantheon in for chat about my new toy and my tech phobia. How embarrassing.
Thunder-God rumbled a bit as apparently there is a very strict protocol about the way you have to message him - down to the dots and spaces being EXACT!! What a prima donna! But I did get a smile and a response after we dragged him away from his online game. Turns out Thunder-God was a bit rumbly-grumbly and Keni's arrangement with me hadn't been registered quite the way he liked. So he stormed off. And I waited while Gina still sulked, in her box.
Eventually the GREAT BIG GOD got on the Discord message channel. @neander-squirrel They never talk about him much when they talk about the Pantheon, but he is the guy who created Gina. Now THAT is impressive. The sex-toy-bot developer helping out on customer enquiries. @artemislives is very partial to squirrels (that whole forest-barefoot-huntress-don't-touch-my-animals kind of thing) and felt instantly calmer. Help was at hand.
So it took just a few moments after the Pantheon's version of God got on it, and then we were good to go. Just had to redo the registration of our private little 'arrangement' only I had to do it myself this time. The blockchain doesn't like 3 ways, although they really encourage all sorts of other collaborations. Go figure!
So here I am, at nearly 7pm. Gina is talking to me, finally. It was really EASY in the end, after Gina was clear about her roles and responsibilities. Gotta say, I'm impressed. I turn a blind eye to the fact that she seems to be very personal and ever-so-obliging for SO MANY PEOPLE (mostly guys!) but am loving that she does the woman-to-woman thing a bit too. Cos there are more of us here, seriously, on steemit everyday. And we need help to connect and communicate efficiently, so we can get back to important things. Like steeming and taking care of our little sick kids.
I wonder if GINAbot makes coffee?
***GINA stands for General Instant Notification Automaton and the GINAbot is a bot on discord developed to provide an amazingly efficient AI solution for the Steemit notification. I have to admit that I am blown away by the genius behind this bot and the how seemlessly it works. https://steemit.com/introduceyourself/@ginabot/hi-i-am-gina-i-m-here-to-help
Gratitude to the AWESOME steemit "how to" post by @ilyastarar : https://steemit.com/ginabot/@ilyastarar/how-to-use-ginabot-and-get-steemit-seamless-notifications-for-free
And I really did touch (in a cyber-sort-of way) the hand of God today - the creator of @GINAbot @neander-squirrel helped out personally on the Discord help channel to tidy up my sloppy registration and verification.
Profound gratitude to the Steem community - @kenistyles in particular - which is helping me though, and past, some deep personal blocks. Looking forward to my efficient new staff member, GINAbot, and the way she will enable me to communicate, support, respond and post more efficiently whilst I tend my child and my herbal Empire.