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Nov
12
2008
Business, Calculators, EAMS, Free, Javascript, PDRater, Technobabble, Workers Compensation Resources

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In a prior post I talked about the top five PDRater.com features that make your life easier.  But, when was the last time you thought about your office staff, hmm?

How can you make their job easier?  Well, the good news is you don’t have to, I’ve given you all the tools to make your office run faster and more efficiently, saving you time and money.

  1. American Idol, Top 5
    Top 5

    MPN’s.  Medical Provider Network lists, complete with logins and passwords.  Whether you’re on the applicant or defense side, your staff is going to need access to these lists.  You can find a doctor for your client or so you can give a list of doctors to opposing counsel.

  2. EAMS DWC to ADJ Number Search Engine. Chances are you’ve got cases with more than one “legacy” Board file number.  With this search engine, you can search for the corresponding EAMS ADJ numbers.  And, you can search for as many Board (or ADJ) numbers as you want at the same time, just by separating them with commas.
  3. EAMS Office Search Engine. When your staff is filling out documents for you, they’re going to need to know the correct name and address for all the parties.  When they need to call opposing counsel, they can also look up the phone number with this search engine.
  4. EAMS Document Type and Document Title Search Engine. Your staff needs a quick way to find the exact EAMS document type and EAMS document title for every document cover sheet getting filed with the Board.  Sure, they could comb through four or five pages of 3 point font on the Board’s form.  Or, better yet, they could search and find exactly the document type and title they need.
  5. EAMS Body Part Codes. There are 62 different body part codes in the EAMS system.  There’s no need to keep the EAMS chart on hand, just tell your staff what body part you want on the form and have them look it up on this website.
  6. DWC / WCAB  / EAMS Forms. There are now more than 130 different forms, new and “legacy”, available on the DIR website.  There’s no reason your staff should have to scroll up or down looking for the right form.  Type in a few characters and get a direct link right to the exact form you need.
  7. Date Calculator. Sure, everyone in your office could have their own date wheel.  In my experience, date wheels and money charts are two of the most commonly swiped office aides right after the good stapler and scotch tape.  With a date calculator built into the website, all of your staff can quickly and easily calculate the number of days between two dates or what day it will be in a certain number of days.

So, there you have the top 5, er 7, PDRater.com website search engine and workers’ compensation calculators your staff is going to benefit from using.  Registration for this site is quick, easy, and free.  Save your staff some time and frustration by having them register for this website and try out the calculators, search engines, and links.

Nov
6
2008
Author, Business, Calculators, Free, Marketing, PDRater

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A while ago a very entrepreneurial friend of mine suggested I read a book called, “The Art of the Start” by Guy Kawasaki.  This one book is responsible in no small part for the website you see today.1  Guy worked for Apple and later started an influential and innovative venture capital firm, Garage.  As if that wasn’t enough, he’s a frequent lecturer, best selling author, and avid blogger.

In one of his recent articles, he talks about “Plan B for Fund Raising.”  Here’s my take on Plans A and B:

Plan Bee*
Plan Bee

Plan A

Anyone who was alive during the late 90’s has heard of “Plan A.”  Build a prototype, put together a PowerPoint presentation, get some venture capital, and spend venture capitalist money.  You know how this story ends.  The company gets bought out and everyone is rich or the company never goes anywhere and its assets are sold for scrap.

Plan B2

Anyone who was alive during the 70’s knows all about “Plan B.”  These are the people who started businesses in their garage.  I suppose we really only hear about the success “Plan B” stories.  No one’s surprised when a home business doesn’t go big so no one talks about it.  Plan B is where somebody believes so feverishly in their own idea they work on it nights and weekends after they come home from their day job as a barrista.

The whole reason I’m writing this blog post, indeed the reason why I have this blog and website at all, is because of “Plan B.”  At its most hectic in the last year, I was working a day job, doing contract attorney and techie work for various clients, while marketing and programming these calculators.  While I didn’t live with my parents, I participated in a surprisingly (and embarrassingly) large number of the activities Guy describes under Plan B.

This is NOT something I intend to do ever again.  Thankfully, the hard work of building the calculators is done.3  These days my only continuing time commitment to this site is writing blog posts and answering fan mail.4

  1. So, if you don’t like it – blame him!  Haha! [↩]
  2. Original photo courtesy of Eye of Einstein [↩]
  3. Well, more accurately, its always almost done.  ;) [↩]
  4. But, mostly blog posts. [↩]
Oct
24
2008
Author, Free, Javascript, MySQL, Not Workers Compensation, Open Source, PDRater, PHP, Technobabble, Website Updates, Wordpress

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Wordpress Upgrade
Wordpress Upgrade

Quick Update

or those of you keeping score at home, I’ve updated to WordPress v2.6.3 last night. 1  This version was released as a security fix.  Unlike other WordPress upgrades, this one took only a few seconds.

Less Quick Updates

Admittedly, prior updates probably only take about 10 minutes, max.  This 10 minutes includes roughly 9 minutes of backing the website and database up and 1 minute of actually uploading the new version.  Since the 9 minutes of backing up is essentially all processing/downloading time, there’s nothing for me to monitor which makes the whole process very painless.

Upcoming Updates

The kind folks over at WordPress have been hard at work on the version 2.7. 2  If you scan through the above link, you’ll get to see what the new WordPress 2.7 control panel/dashboard is supposed to look like.

Best Thing About WordPress

(If you just can’t wait, skip down two paragraphs.)  Regular readers have heard me go on and on about the virtues of WordPress. 3  The interesting thing about new versions of WordPress is that any upgrades would be seamless to a website visitor. 4

A website that is easy to read is a function of the author

Website content is really all that matters to a website visitor.  Visitors don’t care about what software a website owner is using – just as long as the content is useful. 5

A website that is easy to write is a function of the program

The single best thing about WordPress is that this program makes maintaining a website a breeze.  I would recommend WordPress to absolutely anyone interested in creating a website.  For the novice, the program makes it easy to write, edit, and delete single pages or the entire website without any knowledge of programming.  For the tech-minded, the program makes it easy to install, upgrade, and personalize a website.

If you know a little PHP, MySQL, and javascript you could do some c-r-a-z-y things with WordPress. 678

  1. Talk about unnecessary decimal places. [↩]
  2. I call them “kind” since a lot of these people are working for free. [↩]
  3. You know, you three should really form some kind of support group for people who read unnecessarily nerdy and self-referential blogs. [↩]
  4. I think its interesting, anyhow. [↩]
  5. If they don’t care about what kind of software, they sure as heck don’t care its version 2.6.3. [↩]
  6. You could even put together your own workers compensation calculators and EAMS search engines! [↩]
  7. Am I going overboard with these footnotes? [↩]
  8. The answer is “No, I’m not going overboard.”  In the immortal words of Ferris Bueller, “You can never go too far.” [↩]
Oct
23
2008
1997 PDRS, 2005 PDRS, Calculators, CSS, Downloads, Free, PDRater, Permanent Partial Disability, Subscription Features, Technobabble, Website Updates, Workers Compensation Resources

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Running Puppy
This puppy has nothing to do with this post whatsoever.

Last Friday I announced some “website tweaks.”  Since then a paid subscriber1 reiterated a feature request.2 As a paid subscriber, he is able to calculate an unlimited number of ratings so that they all show up on a single page.  Basically, he wanted to be able to see the dollar value for a particular permanent partial disability percentage at the same time as a rating.

This isn’t the first time I’ve wrestled with the problems in creating such a feature.  There are several problems with incorporating this feature into the calculator’s page.

  1. The rating calculator and the dollar value of permanent disability calculators cannot be open at the same time.
  2. The rating calculator does not require the date of injury, just the age of the injured worker.  Without the date of injury, the website cannot properly display the dollar value of a permanent partial disability percentage.
  3. When a paid subscriber has performed more than one rating calculation on a page, the website cannot decide which rating string to convert into the equivalent number of dollars.

This exact feature had been suggested by other users in the past.3  My original thinking was that trying to accommodate this feature request would involve too many unknown variables.  After giving the matter some more thought, here’s what I’ve come up with:

  • Paid subscribers benefit from improved print formatting. Basically, I’ve created a special file that changes the way the calculator page looks when a paid subscriber is printing. 4  Paid subscribers benefit from having the calculator page streamlined specifically for printing.
  • Paid subscribers can have more than one calculator open at a time. This one feature probably addresses 90% of this user’s concerns.  If you’re able to keep both calculators open at the same time, it should be easy to perform a rating and then turn the percentage into a dollar value.
  • Paid subscribers receive automatic calculations of dollar value of ratings. When a paid subscriber performs a rating calculation, the “Dollar Value of Permanent Disability” calculator automatically opens and the dollar value of the rating is automatically calculated.  The user will still have to adjust calculation to account for the year of the injury.  However, this is probably the most elegant solution to this issue.
  1. As opposed to a free subscriber [↩]
  2. Thanks Marc! [↩]
  3. And even some competitors!!! [↩]
  4. The special file is actually just some CSS to optimize page for printing. [↩]
Oct
21
2008
Free, Not Workers Compensation, Open Source, Technobabble, Workers Compensation Resources

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For some reason MS Remote Desktop refuses to work intermittently.  Every 90 days, to be precise.  Like clockwork.1

Among the myriad of incompatibilities between Microsoft’s various products and operating systems is the mind bending error thrown by Remote Desktop.  Remote Desktop should work between any version of Windows starting with XP.  Even when using full versions of MS operating systems, you will likely still get this error:

The remote computer disconnected the session because of an error in licensing protocol.

89 days and counting...
89 days and counting...

There are two reasonable ways around this.

  • First, if you’re not an advanced Windows user, you should really try TightVNC.  Its small, free, open source, uses very little bandwidth, and is easy to install and use.  It will do probably 90% of everything Remote Desktop will do.  As a bonus, you won’t have to monkey with it every 90 days.
  • Second, if you are an advanced Windows user and are comfortable using Regedit, there is another option.  If you’ve never heard of Regedit, you really really should not use this option.  If your Windows registry settings get fouled up, and it is incredibly easy to do, you can kiss your Windows install goodbye.  In any case, the solution is to go to, “HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\MSLicensing” and delete everything under that heading.  The only downside is that this must be performed every 90 days.

FYI, this second ridiculous work around is from the official MicroSoft website!  You’d think that if your product stopped working every 90 days you’d, you know, try to fix it.  Instead their game plan is to actually suggest users delete vital parts of the operating system.

For what its worth, I use a combination of the two solutions.  I fire up Regedit every 90 days so I can use Remote Desktop and I use TightVNC when I can.

  1. Photo courtesy of Laffy4k [↩]
Oct
17
2008
Author, Average Weekly Wage, Business, EAMS, Free, Open Source, PDRater, Technobabble, Website Updates, Wordpress, Workers Compensation Resources

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Changing themes for a WordPress website is incredibly easy.  However, sometimes there can be slight problems in the transition.  I had heavily edited and customized the prior theme’s code so that it would be better suited to this website.1

Fixing things
Fixing things

Changing the website’s theme has involved a few small tweaks2 :

  • For about four days the Articles section was merged with the Blog section.  This has been fixed.
  • I’ve found a really great plugin that allows me to insert footnotes into blog posts.3  My previous attempts at inserting footnotes manually were either time consuming or incredibly clumsy. 4
  • I’ve made minor alterations to the current theme – background colors, menu ordering, etc.
  • Some people were separating their WCAB “legacy” number to ADJ number searches by semi-colons, rather than commas.  I believe there’s really no sense in fighting users. 5  If a slightly different method makes sense to users, go with it.  I’ve adjusted the WCAB “legacy” number to ADJ number search function so that you can separate by semi-colons or commas.6
  • In printing out some Average Weekly Wage calculations, I discovered to my dismay that this website looked terrible when you tried to print it out.  Worse yet, the website header, sidebar, and other navigation information took up nearly a page.  This meant that a printout of a calculation might span two or more pages.  I’ve since fixed this using some particularly cool CSS.7
  1. Click this link see what the prior theme looked like. [↩]
  2. Photo courtesy of CharlesThompson [↩]
  3. Cool, no? [↩]
  4. A special thanks to Mr. Simon Elvery for writing this great footnote plugin. [↩]
  5. Unlike a certain “web-based” electronic adjudication management system… [↩]
  6. Or both! [↩]
  7. Well, my definition of cool, anyhow. [↩]
Oct
7
2008
Author, Calculators, Free, Technobabble

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Most people don’t even realize that they’re trend setters.  With the increase in online or website based programs, more and more people are turning to “cloud computing.”  This term refers to a process where all the computational heavy lifting is not performed on a user’s computer but rather an external computer.

Clouds, Computing?
Clouds, Computing?

The most common example of cloud computing is probably “Google Docs,” which is Google’s online suite of office productivity software.  It includes programs for spreadsheets, presentations, and of course document editing.  It can open and save in its own format, OpenOffice format, and Microsoft Office formats.  Even Adobe released a free online version of Photoshop.

Cloud computing is basically the process of outsourcing your math.  There are a lot of situations where this makes a lot of sense:

  • Money. Lower computing requirements mean you don’t need as powerful a computer, saving you money.
  • Money. Lower computing requirements also mean you won’t need to purchase an upgrade or new computer as often, saving you money.
  • Time. Nothing to install, upgrade, or troubleshoot.
  • Money. Web server updates mean you don’t have to purchase software upgrades, saving you money.
  • Scaling. Need another copy of a program?  Just fire up a new computer and launch a new web browser.
  • Fewer Resources. When the program never actually runs on your computer, it uses no memory.  When your computer isn’t working hard running a program, it uses less power.
  • More Resources. When the program is never installed on your computer, it uses no hard drive space.  On the flip side, many cloud computing programs allow you to save your work or files online – giving you more hard drive space than what’s on your computer.

So, how does all this technobabble about cloud computing apply to you?  Well, every time you use this website’s online web-based permanent disability calculators and EAMS search functions you’re letting my web server do the number crunching for you.

You’re, quite literally, letting me help you save resources, time, and money.

Oct
2
2008
Author, Free, Laptop, Not Workers Compensation, Technobabble

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Nerds
From Uncool Nerds...

Yeah, I said it. And, I don’t care that it sounds ridiculously self-serving. Frankly, I think iTunes, MySpace, and instant messaging are to blame. These three things, more than anything else, made computers cool.

You think mechanics and handymen were always considered cool manly-men?  No way.  First cars and home improvement had to be cool. THEN the guys who fix/maintain those things became cool.

There was a day when computers and the internet were only good for word processing and searching libraries.  When these things were not indispensable, there were no real uses for nerds.  You know, besides copying their homework.

I think the first time anyone ever thought I was cool for being a nerd was when I was in law school.  A fellow law student had a floppy disk (yeah, it was that long ago…) that stopped working.  The campus tech guys were unable to do anything about it.  I asked if I could take a look – and was able to recover the data.

To Cool Nerds
...To Cool Nerds

These days a nerd can save your iPod, iPhone, laptop, recover your lost passwords, convert your files, and set up your wireless network.  They keep your computers virus free, network humming along, and your e-mails arriving right on time.

Heck, sometimes they even build online web-based workers’ compensation calculators which crank out permanent disability ratings and let everyone use them for free.

So, why not hug a nerd today?

This Public Service Announcement has been brought to you by Huey Lewis and the News, because it really is “Hip To Be Square.”

Sep
22
2008
Calculators, EAMS, Free, Links, PDRater, Technobabble, Website Updates, Workers Compensation Resources

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EAMS Logo
EAMS Logo

As you may already know, the WCAB’s EAMS sub-webpage allows you to search for the new ADJ numbers or the official address for a claims administrator or representative.

Calculator
Calculator

Using the same data, I’ve written my own search engines that, to be blunt, work better.  You can find these two new search engines on the calculators page.  They are named “WCAB ←→ ADJ” and “EAMS Registered Offices”.

Later this week I’ll post about “why” and “how” I’ve developed these two new “calculators.” For now, I’ll just talk about why you’re going to want to join this site (for free!) and bookmark the calculators page.

  1. User Friendly. Search engines shouldn’t need pages of documentation.  One search box is all you really need.
  2. Easier. My search engines aren’t picky.  Enter “OAK0123456, OAK 0123456, OAK123456, OAK 000123456” and you’ll get “ADJ522195, ADJ522195, ADJ522195, ADJ522195.”  The EAMS page requires you enter the WCAB or ADJ number with no spaces and exactly 10 characters.
  3. More powerful. Search the Claims Administrators’ Offices and Representatives’ Offices database or unlimited ADJ and WCAB numbers simultaneously.
  4. Faster searches. You can search for 50 WCAB and ADJ numbers on my site in the time it takes you to search for one at the EAMS page.
  5. Better results. Although I use the same information as the WCAB search engines, I’ve designed my calculators to apply your search query to more of the information.  The result is better search hits.
  6. One page to rule them all. Both new search engines are built into the same page as the rest of my calculators.  No need to poke around the WCAB-EAMS website.  Bookmark one page and have all of the latest EAMS information right at your fingertips.

Comments, questions, criticsms always appreciated.

Sep
12
2008
Calculators, Free, Open Source, PDRater, Technobabble, Workers Compensation Resources

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Google Chrome
Google Chrome

Google jumped head fist into the browser war last week.

The big players at the moment are Internet Explorer, Firefox/Mozilla, Opera, and Safari (Mac).  From Google’s information about Chrome, it looks like it was designed based on Apple’s popular Webkit and Mozilla’s very popular Firefox.  An added benefit is that this new browser is open source.  Google’s online comic about Chrome and their new vision of how a web browser should look and behave is actually fairly interesting.

The other bit of good news is that I’ve downloaded and installed the beta version of Google’s Chrome in order to see whether it is compatible with this website and its web apps.

Good news!  Chrome works flawlessly with my workers’ compensation calculators!  So, feel free to use your choice of web broswer to calculate permanent disability percentages, temporary disability rates, life pension rates, and nearly every other kind of benefit available under California workers’ compensation law.