This morning on YouTube I watched a homegrown robot built like a meccano set kick a ball. Only took a couple of minutes to line it up :)

What is it about robot-builders that makes them construct replicas of ourselves, when only a tiny percent of the world's population doesn't even kick a tin can? I can't remember the last time I kicked a ball, yet kicking and running are the high skill factors they try and build in to these mechanical marvels.

Sure, I know it is really an advanced from of locomotion they are trying to show off.

But what about delivering me a freshly cooked breakfast in bed instead? I would pay big money for that. Kicking a ball around the back yard with a robot which responds every two minutes, not really.

A reader mistook me for one of these robot kicking wannabe's.

He wrote to me on my new support desk, and said - rather amusingly I thought: "Thank you for (what seems like a robotic automatic) reply..."

I'll explain why I write like a robot in a minute, but first...

The new help desk software has been an enormous success since I introduced it a month back.

Up till then all the support from me was done on a wing and a prayer. I've got so much going on each day... that this side of my business went down the tubes for a while.

Quite a while.

Problem is - I can't outsource my stuff because it's complex. (I'm truly unique, yay!)

"What are you doing at this hour?" calls my wife on the phone intercom. "When are you going to sleep already?" (She doesn't really shout like a New Yorker or Woody Allen's mother in law... I just made that up).

"Won't be long now," I shout back at the phone, furiously tapping the last of my replies into the computer.

It has been like that for years, and I never really caught up.

And the questions were rarely problems... they were mainly questions that anyone could find an answer for - if they only read my lotto websites a little more thoroughly.

Well now I have caught up.

The new software is running perfectly, all support questions get answered within 48 hours, and life is good for my Silverites (buyers of my systems).

Except for Harry (I'll call him Harry because I've forgotten his real first name).

When he gently reminded me I sounded like a robot, I realised I had been writing auto-replies to the masses instead of individuals.

I hadn't really personalised it. Not like these daily dramas I write to you.

Well, I'll try to make them less like Microsoft corporate and more like me.

But if the replies are short - maybe a little abrupt or robotic - just be patient, OK?

While you're waiting for me to reply, click over to /winners and read about the many winners we've got. Like Mary:

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Friday night I had my husband choose numbers to fill out a Powerball profile so that I could see if I could be successful creating a profile myself. That profile also had 4 numbers on one of the Profile lines and 3 lines with just the Powerball, so there would have been a total of 4 winners on that Profile chart. This proves to me that absolutely anyone can use your system.

Mary J.

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