How to get .Mac, cheaper (again)

As is common in these parts around this time of year (see here and here for examples), I'm doing my quick rundown of where to get a cheap copy of .Mac. And once again, it appears that for 2-5 people the best price is Amazon's Apple .Mac 4.0 Online Service Family Pack for $145 (versus $180 list).

There are a few places that claim to be cheaper — such as these on Amazon Marketplace with lousy ratings ($102-134), and these on Froogle who don't seem to have them in stock ($136-144) — but I want actual legit merchandise from actual legit merchants. Even though Tom could get $30 off Apple's price (due to his recent MacBook purchase), Amazon is still cheaper.

One surprise to me is that Apple doesn't appear to offer an education discount on .Mac. As we include Sean in our Family plan, we figured that this time around we'd look at the higher ed price, but it's the same as the Apple list price. Drat. Same goes for upgrade pricing — it just doesn't exist.

If you just need an individual box (list: $100) and you're in the market for a new Mac anyway, taking the $30 off and paying $70 through Apple is the way to go. Otherwise, I'd take the $80 Amazon price for their Apple .Mac 4.0 Online Service box. The bottom feeders at Froogle ($74-78) and Amazon Marketplace ($70-75), again, don't appear to be good bets. Or find a buddy who's also in the market for .Mac and split the cost of the family pack.

(Wondering what the big deal is about .Mac? Feel free to click that button above and on the left for a free trial.)

JavaScript 6e at Amazon

After months of work, it's nice to see that Amazon has JavaScript and Ajax for the Web: Visual QuickStart Guide, Sixth Edition in stock.

It's available now for immediate delivery, so go get yours!

Still here...

Despite appearances, no, Tom has not stuffed my dead body into a closet somewhere (if he was trying to get away with hiding my corpse and claiming, "Oh, she just stepped away for a moment…" the thing for him to do would be to fake lots of posts from me). Instead, I've just gotten to the point where I haven't blogged in so long, I feel like I need to say something profound and deeply meaningful to kick things off again. But I have nothing profound and meaningful to say, so you'll just have to bear with what I drag out.

Right now, what I'm running out of time to write about is that SxSW is doing something different with their panels for 2007: they're posting the proposals, and then letting anyone who comes along vote for which they think should be included. The deadline for voting is September 8, and, well, I think that you should vote for mine:

When Your Partner Is Your Partner: When Home & Office Collide

"Honey, let's work together!" sounds like a good idea at first — but how does it actually work in practice? In this session, you'll hear what succeeds, what doesn't, and what (nearly) brings couples to the break-up point as several successful programmers, designers, and writers talk about how they work with the person they love and love the person they work with.

Or, here's how I described it on the Wise-Women list:

Tom and I have been working together for nine years — we'll be at ten just about the time SxSW comes around.

I have a lot of ideas about what works and what doesn't and why so many couples are working together these days. Part of what I want to do with this panel is see how other couples are making it work.

One of my theories is that this is how most couples lived & worked throughout most of time, and it's just since the industrial revolution or so that we've moved away from it. Now, with the Internet enabling us to work whenever/wherever, we're moving back into a more natural mode where there's less differentiation between work versus not-work — but we've lost how to do it successfully. OTOH, most panels are only about an hour long, so I probably won't get into that much; it'll be more "what works for you?" type questions.

C'mon, vote for it — you know you want to. Hey, if you're reading this, there's a good chance you're someone who wants to be on that panel; if that's the case, let me know why. I've got a few people in mind that I'd like to see up there, but I'm likely to have room for more.

You can pick up to ten panels that you want to see, so read 'em all. There are some great proposals there, and I'm just hoping to be included among them.

Gaaak.

Apologies for the lack of posts. We've both come down with some sort of Low-Level Ickysickness that involves feeling achy all over, a cough, and general malaise. Probably because of Worldcon, since all conventions are pits of pestilence. And breathing that chunky Southern California air (and a week of hotel airconditioning) probably didn't help.