Category: Free

By Posted on Posted in Business, Calculators, EAMS, Free, Javascript, PDRater, Technobabble, Workers Compensation Resources No Comments Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

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.

By Posted on Posted in Author, Business, Calculators, Free, Marketing, PDRater No Comments Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

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. ((So, if you don’t like it – blame him!  Haha!))  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 B ((Original photo courtesy of Eye of Einstein))

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. ((Well, more accurately, its always almost done.  ;) ))  These days my only continuing time commitment to this site is writing blog posts and answering fan mail. ((But, mostly blog posts.))

By Posted on Posted in Author, Free, Javascript, MySQL, Not Workers Compensation, Open Source, PDRater, PHP, Technobabble, Website Updates, Wordpress No Comments Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Wordpress Upgrade
Wordpress Upgrade

Quick Update

or those of you keeping score at home, I’ve updated to WordPress v2.6.3 last night.  ((Talk about unnecessary decimal places.))  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.  ((I call them “kind” since a lot of these people are working for free.))  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.  ((You know, you three should really form some kind of support group for people who read unnecessarily nerdy and self-referential blogs.))  The interesting thing about new versions of WordPress is that any upgrades would be seamless to a website visitor.  ((I think its interesting, anyhow.))

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.  ((If they don’t care about what kind of software, they sure as heck don’t care its version 2.6.3.))

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.  ((You could even put together your own workers compensation calculators and EAMS search engines!)) ((Am I going overboard with these footnotes?)) ((The answer is “No, I’m not going overboard.”  In the immortal words of Ferris Bueller, “You can never go too far.”))

By Posted on Posted in 1997 PDRS, 2005 PDRS, Calculators, CSS, Downloads, Free, PDRater, Permanent Partial Disability, Subscription Features, Technobabble, Website Updates, Workers Compensation Resources No Comments Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , ,
Running Puppy
This puppy has nothing to do with this post whatsoever.

Last Friday I announced some “website tweaks.”  Since then a paid subscriber ((As opposed to a free subscriber)) reiterated a feature request. ((Thanks Marc!)) 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. ((And even some competitors!!!))  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.  ((The special file is actually just some CSS to optimize page for printing.))  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.

By Posted on Posted in Free, Not Workers Compensation, Open Source, Technobabble, Workers Compensation Resources No Comments Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

For some reason MS Remote Desktop refuses to work intermittently.  Every 90 days, to be precise.  Like clockwork. ((Photo courtesy of Laffy4k))

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.