I found animal poops in the package, and I suspected that they’re from some mouse that somehow sneaked into the storage area of my local courier. I assume that explains the two weeks delay in the final delivery.

I contacted Baker Creeks right away out of curiosity to ask if they somehow insured the package. I never expected it to be insured and never meant for Baker Creeks to take responsibility for the issue. Still, to my surprise, Lisa (the rep who answered my email) straight away had my order re-shipped without questioning.

After a while, I’ve got my new seeds and continue to be surprised.

The package contains all the seeds I’ve previously ordered and along with the free seeds (they always include a free seed packet for orders above a certain amount). Not only that, for this shipment, they’ve also decided to package all the seeds in an individual ziplock bag, which I believe are for some extra protection in the rare case that it could get into the same problem as before.

Sure, Baker Creek doesn’t need to re-ship my order. They’re also not obliged to include the free seeds. The ziplock bags were also not necessary. They went above and beyond to do all that, and I couldn’t be happier. That’s just excellent customer service.

I’ve been ordering seeds from the company since I first started with my home garden a few years back. They have great seed selections, and the seeds are very reliable. They didn’t have to do all this to win my next order, but the least I could do is share my positive experience, and perhaps you might want to give Baker Creek a look the next time you want to order some seeds for your garden. Even if you don’t already have a garden, go to the website and look at the seed listing. Who knows, it might get you excited about gardening the same way I did when I went there for the first time.

I can tell from the drawing on the parcel that it’s the Beat The Blerch 2016 virtual race kit I ordered back in April. It was supposed to ship before the actual physical race on September 17th in Seattle, so even though the race kit came in a bit late, it’s not that much of a deal. I can run the virtual marathon whenever I feel comfortable, but I have not followed my training plan as closely as I should.

I’ll work on my training later, but coming back to the kit, I chuckled for a bit after the unboxing. It’s not a typical race kit for running for sure, and the familiarity with The Blerch character makes it even more interesting for me.

You might want to check out Matthew Inman’s comic on running to get some idea of what I’m talking about. I hope the comic will help you pick up running or improve your passion for running if you already are a runner.

Shirt design – back. Atypical reason for running, but it resonates with a lot more people than most would admit.

Now, on to the training, finish the marathon, and earn the medal!

You can use the tea plate and the 1 foot wide stepping stones for the pod’s size scale. Sure, I only eat those on the plate, and the rest get composted.

The truth is the bigger ones are not only still perfectly edible, but the ones I see at the market are at times comparably tougher and more fibrous even at a lot smaller size. It’s just that I can’t get over the stigma that the bigger ones would be horrible to eat.

It might not be the case for every type of okra.

The ones I planted were the Burmese Okra variety. I can’t tell if it’s the type of okra that I grew or the soil or watering that affects the result. Regardless of the size, mine still tasted good, less fibrous, and maintain a light green color even for what I would look like over-matured pods.

It could be that this particular species is unique, or maybe it’s time for me to go to the local store and get some other type of okra seeds to experiment with.

We were given 250+ pages of AWS Technical Essentials Student Guide, and the sessions will go through the book throughout the day and end with certification for all those attending.

Having attended the same training before and being an AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate myself, I was there mainly for a refresher on the topics and to keep myself up to date with AWS in general via the keynote. My current work doesn’t require me to use AWS, so I need to keep myself current in the topics or start losing the knowledge over time to other not-so-important things that constantly fight for the precious space in my head.

Talking about the keynote, the demo with Sphero with built-in Intel Edison and how it works with Raspberry Pi and AWS services such as Alexa, IoT, and Lambda was quite fun. The geek side of me always wanted to play with such things, but I couldn’t even get myself to buy a Raspberry Pi kits that I’ve always been contemplating to get since the first edition was released, which was many, many years ago. Also, the demo that uses iPhone camera displayed in macOS, which I assume is done via the simulator app included in Xcode, reminded me of my plan to start with iOS programming, which never came to fruition. It’s a pity that Xcode was the first app that I installed when I first got my MacBook, but I never got past the iOS Playground app until now.

Looking forward to AWSome Day Kuala Lumpur 2017, and I hope to get my associate SysOps and DevOps AWS certificate by then.

In the meantime, I’ve been writing general computing tutorials at Simplified Guide. It was not as frequent as I wanted to (or should), and the nature of the site limits the scope and style of my writing.

I guess it’s time to say hello again, world, and hopefully, I’ll have some exciting years to come with this blog.