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Saturday, November 17, 2012

Shopping Tips, 2012

This is my shopping advice update for 2012.  Much of it is the same as last year's.  Please be sure to read that first.  Its all still valid and points to way to a lot of discounts.

This year, I want to add three new tips to save you money and stress:

  1. Don't bother with Black Friday.
  2. Use your phone.
  3. Don't forget your points.


Black Friday

No one likes fighting crowds of anxious shoppers.  Good news:  You shouldn't bother.

Black Friday sales actually cost more than routine pricing from online stores.  There are exceptions, but that is not the norm.

Smart Phone = Smart Shopping

If you do decide to go shopping in a physical store and have a smartphone, download a couple of comparison shopping tools first.

There are a number of apps that will use your phone's camera to scan barcodes or even search based on a picture of the product.  They look up the price on Amazon, Google, eBay, and other services.  This is amazingly easy and quick.  Look on your phone's App Store to see what I mean.

Here are a few examples for iPhones:
If you have an Android phone and can recommend an app like these, please put it in the comments below.

Credit Card Points

Lastly, it your credit card gives you "points," consider trading them in for gift cards.  For example, you could trade in 10,000 points for $100 at Amazon and then buy several gifts.  You could also trade in points for several small iTunes or Amazon gift cards.  These would make great gifts for children who are about to receive an iPad or Kindle Fire from their parents.


As stated at the beginning, don't forget to check last year's tips for more advice.

Tuesday, June 5, 2012

Taking Google Docs With You


If you're graduating, moving, or otherwise leaving Cairo-Durham CSD soon, you might be interested in taking your Google Docs files with you.  This is a lot easier than you might think.


  1. Go to the Start Portal.
  2. Click on Docs and login, if necessary.
  3. Click on the check box for any file or files.
  4. A "More" button should now appear.  Click on it.
  5. The "More" button should pop-down a menu.  From that menu, select "Download..."
  6. You will see a new window.  In that window, there are two tabs named "Selected items" and "All items.  Click on "All items".
  7. There will be three options in small print.  They are "MS Office", "Open Office", and "PDF".  Select the format that you want to convert your files into.  If in doubt, you can do this process once for each option and then save all three copies of your files.  Most people find "MS Office" to fit their needs.
  8. Click "Download".
  9. Follow any additional directions that appear on the screen.
Soon you should have copies of your files downloaded.  You can place these on a flash drive, email them to someone, upload them to your personal Google Docs account, or upload them to any number of other services such as DropBox or SkyDrive.

(Note:  This is an update to the old article "Saving Google Docs" from June 13, 2011.)

Monday, March 5, 2012

Changing PowerSchool Login for Parents (March 5)

On March 5, 2012, the way that parents login to PowerSchool changed.  If you're having trouble logging into our PowerSchool system as a parent, please check out the directions on our website or you can download the directions.