S, who is trying to transition outside of $EMPLOYER to something local to her area of the country, is taking a course to learn how to administer Microsoft's Azure cloud platform. She said the course includes access to MSFT's own servers, so she can get some hands-on experience.

I had told her that the big cloud vendors have zero-price accounts that have access to certain specific services, and that she should sign up. The $EMPLOYER provided Microsoft training account is mostly videos of talking heads telling you about it, with many quick demonstrations included, but almost no actual interaction with Azure itself.

(Which makes sense. The accounts we're using are employer-provided, so if we got real access, any charges would be the organization's responsibility.)

Anyway, I told her that I thought I had a Raspberry Pi Zero W starter kit laying around unused, and that I'd send it if I find it. This is because we also discussed her learning a little about Linux system administration.