Can also take her stargazing and teach her about constellations. There are mobile apps to help you find them, but books and searching for them yourselves is also fun.
I posted this in another thread, but it’s relevant here:
Google disabled my wife's voice number and business account for several weeks, right after she ordered new business cards, signs, and started a marketing campaign. They continued to charge her for Google ads each week.
Her accounts were re-enabled about 7 - 8 weeks later. No explanation given.
She averages 2 - 5 new customers per week, gained largely through referrals and her marketing campaigns, so Google's actions had a significant impact on her business.
Customer support was very limited, and again they provided no reason for their actions, no timeline, no nothing.
I donate money to some open source projects, and also to the FSF and EFF. I was also able to get previous employers to match my donations. Good reminder for me to see if my current employer will do that.
> I do see a lot of people extrapolating from what is essentially individual customer support up to company customer support. It's not far off extrapolating from a bad experience as an Amazon customer to AWS being a bad option – a comparison I don't often see being made.
I think the difference with Amazon and some of it's competitors is that Amazon has made customer service a core business tenet as evidenced through "Customer Obsession" being their first leadership principle. It's ingrained in their culture, and it inspires confidence.
edit: typo, changed $700,000 to $70,000. Also note that isn't income, but revenue.
> For a certain size of customer this problem does go away
> We have an account manager, have received lots of support from Google in setting up, have been able to trial products in closed alpha before release, and haven't been hit by any meaningful deprecations
Too bad that level of customer service doesn't extend across their offerings and to smaller customers. A conservative estimate puts my wife's losses at just over $70,000 for the time her accounts were disabled. That doesn't include potential referrals from customers she would have gained during that time.
I've been an Amazon customer for years, for several of their products, and I have yet to experience an issue that wasn't handled promptly and to my satisfaction.
Several companies I've worked for have used AWS, and we experienced that same commitment to customer service. My network from those companies use AWS for their side projects and startups.
> we are not a Google competitor, and one of our major partners considered it a significant benefit of using us that we did not host on Amazon services.
Some companies don't use or have moved off of GCP for similar reasons.
Google disabled my wife's voice number and business account for several weeks, right after she ordered new business cards, signs, and started a marketing campaign. They continued to charge her for Google ads each week.
Her accounts were re-enabled about 7 - 8 weeks later. No explanation given.
She averages 2 - 5 new customers per week, gained largely through referrals and her marketing campaigns, so Google's actions had a significant impact on her business.
My wife cancelled her accounts with Google after transferring her voice number. I've also moved off of GCP for my side businesses, and several people within our network have done the same after hearing about our situation. I've even stopped using their search engine, and am moving away from gmail.
I advise anyone considering Google's products to look elsewhere.
Several years ago, I worked on some open source projects that involved Racket. The community and Matthew Felleisen in particular were very helpful, and it sticks with me that the project founder took time to teach me idiomatic/correct ways to write Racket code and tests.
Not condoning Matthew Felleisen's behavior towards Matthew Butterick - people deserve to be treated with dignity and respect - but there does seem to be a side to M.F that enjoys teaching and evangelizing Racket.
> One thing Amazon doesn’t bring up is that athletes train for an event with a definite end date. Athletes aren’t competing day in and day out, and they have time to rest and recuperate in between. The comparison becomes even more ridiculous when you look at what a pro athlete’s day is actually like: significant time is spent warming up to avoid injuries, practice may be only a few hours out of the day (read: not in eight or 10-hour shifts), there’s time made for rest or even naps, and significant effort is spent on nutrition. It’s safe to say that most Amazon warehouse workers don’t have professional nutritionists and / or chefs taking care of their dietary needs.
It seems to me that Amazon is trying to set the expectation that their warehouse jobs are physically demanding. Other physically demanding jobs/industries are: the military, construction, landscaping, firefighting, fitness trainers, farmers, dancers, etc...
Workers in those fields aren't necessarily given time to nap, and "don't have professional nutritionists and / or chefs taking care of their dietary needs." Of course most employers in those fields don't call their workers "athletes", but most athletes outside of professional sports have perks like naps and nutritionists. I think a lot of amateur athletes have jobs, and practice and compete in their free time.
Also a big fan of Legos (and so are my kids).
Highlights magazine is great for that age and can fill up some time.
Step-by-step drawing books can also be fun, and can usually be found at libraries: https://www.charlotteobserver.com/reviews/drawing-book-for-k...
Can also take her stargazing and teach her about constellations. There are mobile apps to help you find them, but books and searching for them yourselves is also fun.