Satisfaction Guaranteed (and More): The Pragmatic Bookshelf

On my December Shopping Spree: Ruby on Rails books, the picture showed 2 copy of the Agile Web Development with Rails books. That's right: 2 copies of the same title.

What happened was that the Pragmatic Bookshelf had sent me the first book. But somehow, US Postal Service mishandled it. I don't know how that happened but I had not receive it within the normal USPS delivery time-frame (which is about 7-10 business days).

As days gone by, I became a little bit concerned to the point that I had to contact their support to find out the status of my order.

Lucky me, Pragmatic Bookshelf has a great customer support that not only they responded very fast, but they also quickly remedied the situation once they figured out that something was amiss.

Great Customer Support: act on it immediately

Within a few days after our e-mail exchange, the book arrived and I'm one happy customer.

But there's more to the story. At the end of December 2011, another copy of the same book was delivered!.

I mulled for a few days what to do about it before I decided to contact them and ask if I should return it (keep in mind that it's a bit pricey to return the book since I will have to send the book from outside the U.S.)

Fortunately, Pragmatic Bookshelf is a great company. They informed me that I can keep the book.

Today I decided that the book may end up in the office bookshelf for everybody to read.

Excellent service. Definitely will recommend Pragmatic Bookshelf to my colleagues.

December Shopping Spree: Ruby and Rails Books

In this edition of "December Shopping Spree", we're back to books again.

It's no secret that I love computer books. Having said that, I think my love has slowed down a lot recently and I would not be surprised that one day I would move to something else (business or philosophy books probably?)

After a rampage of JavaScript book purchases, I had my eye set on Ruby and Rails books.

Early 2007, I was working at Kinzin, a Rails shop. Back then Rails was version 1.2.3 and Capistrano version was 1.2 (was about to move to 2.0). After Kinzin, I decided to move back to C#/Java (static language) world and had not looked at Ruby any more.

Lately, I've been thinking to give Ruby and Rails another try. I thought that maybe I can use Ruby as my primary scripting language since I sort of lost interest in Python (used to use Python a lot).

So I went online and purchased a few Rails books. Ordered three of them from Amazon US (way cheaper than Amazon CA):

• Eloquent Ruby teaches Ruby best practices
• Metaprogramming Ruby teaches meta-programming (isn't it obvious?) in Ruby
• Crafting Rails Applications teaches advance technique in Rails

And one from The Pragmatic Bookshelf: Agile Web Development with Rails 4th Edition Second printing.

I purchase one book directly from The Pragmatic Bookshelf because they're the only one who carries the second printing of Rails 4th Edition which supports Rails 3.1 (latest release). Nobody else had it.

I got the Programming Ruby 1.9 from The Pragmatic Bookshelf as well back in 2010 when they had a promo of $10 to commemorate the 10 years of Pickaxe book.

I believe this concludes all of my book purchases: 1 JavaScript book, 2 Ruby books and 2 Rails books with a total of 5 technical books I purchased. All within 2011.