PDRater – Page 38 – PDRater – Permanent Disability Calculators

My Laptop Is Back!!!

By Jay Shergill Posted on October 1, 2008 Posted in Author, Business, Laptop, Marketing, Not Workers Compensation, PDRater, Technobabble No Comments Tagged with Captain Kirk, Cell Phone, Crunch Time, Crystals, Dell, Few Minutes, Friday Afternoon, Fry S Electronics, Fyi, Hard Drive Enclosure, Initial Problem, Laptop Drive, new year, Palin, Paramount, Polarity, Proprietor, Record Time, Wallet, Warp Engines, Warranty

My laptop is back, up and running! I truly cannot explain just how happy I am that I have it back.

As I mentioned earlier, my laptop stopped working on the Sunday night before last. The next day I stopped by a local Fry’s Electronics and picked up a hard drive enclosure for my laptop’s hard drive. This solved my initial problem, being cut off from my data, by allowing me to schlep my laptop’s hard drive with me. Even though I had my data with me, I didn’t have my laptop with me. I constantly felt as if I had lost my wallet or cell phone. A disconcerting feeling, to say the least.

On Friday afternoon I took my laptop to a local repair shop, Paramount Technology, and, after talking with the proprietor for a few minutes, left my laptop with them at about 12:30pm. He estimated they might have it ready on Tuesday; Monday at the earliest.

They called my cell less than three hours later to tell me my laptop was fixed.

Everyone knows how Captain Kirk would ask the impossible of Scotty. Like clockwork, Scotty would bitch and moan about how he could not perform the impossible. And, yet, when crunch time came, the polarity was reversed, dilithium crystals realigned, and they had warp engines back on line.

They did a great job, warranting their work for 90 days, had my laptop repaired in record time, and didn’t scratch my baby. (FYI, Dell offers a whopping 30 day warranty on their work. In the words of Govenor Palin, “Thanks, but no thanks.”)

I don’t care if they were practicing “under promise and over deliver.” Paramount Technology has earned my business and my recommendation.

Best of September 2008

By Jay Shergill Posted on September 30, 2008 Posted in Author, Calculators, EAMS, Laptop, Not Workers Compensation, PDRater, Technobabble, Website Updates, Workers Compensation Resources No Comments Tagged with Backpack, Checklists, Document Type, Dow, Dwc Forms, kitten it, Laptop Repair, Martini, new year, Retroactive Benefits, road warrior, Survival Guide, Virtual Real Estate

*PDRater up, the Dow down — PDRater up, the Dow down

September 2008 was a pretty good month for PDRater.com. Yay! ((Original photo courtesy of Daniel Martini. Mad photoshop skillz, all mine!))

Not so good for the economy. Boo! Perhaps this website needs a new, darker, tagline? How about: “When you’ve lost everything else, you’ve still got PDRater.com”

Here’s my favorite posts from this past month.

I had the most fun with the “End of the World” posts from mid-September. If you read nothing else, check out the one labeled, “The End of the World: A To Do List“. That one is worth a look for my mad photoshop skillz alone.

For the more practical minded, the Road Warrior Checklists might be helpful. I think I’ve got at least one more “Road Warrior Checklist” in me. Also, I’ve provided some advice on what to do when your laptop stops working.

Six new calculators this month!

The World Ended on 9/10/2008

Laptop Repair Saga

Road Warrior Checklists

Virtual Real Estate (since the non-virtual kind is dead)

Another Three New EAMS Calculators!

By Jay Shergill Posted on September 29, 2008 Posted in Calculators, EAMS, Laptop, PDRater, Technobabble, Website Updates, Workers Compensation Resources No Comments Tagged with Access Forms, Adjudication, Calculator, Code Search, Document Title, Document Type, Dwc Forms, E Mail, kitten it, Last Monday, new year, Number Lookups, Reverse Lookup, Search Engine, Search Engines, Search Function, Title Search

EAMS Logo

As you know, last Monday I brought you two new EAMS calculators / search engines which were basically an improved search engine for the EAMS ADJ number lookups and EAMS office lookups.

The IT guy for my law firm wrote an e-mail to me on Friday suggesting:

Hey, how about a body part search function on your website? That might be useful sometime.

First off, thank you for the suggestion TK! Secondly, I was actually in the process of building such a calculator on Sunday September 21, 2008 when my laptop stopped working. My laptop was fixed on Friday (more tomorrow) and I was able to finish the EAMS body part to body part code search function.

With the EAMS Body Part Codes search engine, you can search for the EAMS code associated with a body part of your choice. And, just in case you receive an Application for Adjudication of Claim or some document referencing the EAMS Body Part Code, you can even do a reverse lookup – searching by the EAMS Body Part Code!

I was so happy to get my laptop back I built a whole new EAMS search engine and a better way to access forms. After having a hell of a time trying to locate the proper document type and document title on Friday I decided to make this my next project.

With the EAMS Document Type and Title search engine, you can search for an EAMS Document Title by the document type or document title itself.

With the new EAMS forms on the DWC forms page, you now have a bewilderingly large number of forms to search through in order to find the one you need. Not only do you have to look through the 136 different forms offered by the page, but the EAMS forms are not easily distinguishable from the non-EAMS forms.

What I’ve done is create an EAMS and DWC forms search engine which scans through the DWC’s lists of forms by the form type, form name, and form number, and generates a list of just the forms which fit your search. On my forms search engine, the EAMS forms will be highlighted so you know its an EAMS form at a glance.

And THAT is how I squandered my weekend.

Blog Bigtime!

By Jay Shergill Posted on September 26, 2008 Posted in Author, Business, Marketing, Not Workers Compensation, PDRater, Search Engine Ranking, SEO, Technobabble No Comments Tagged with Bigtime, California Workers Compensation, E Mail, Earthquakes, Google, Link Exchange Request, Link Exchanges, Low Quality, Mail Link, new year, Next Level, Pagerank, Quality Link, Random Silliness, Related Services, Resources Page, Richter Scale, Screenshot, Search Engines, Wednesday Afternoon

Wednesday afternoon I received an e-mail “Link Exchange Request” from another website. That website is for legally related services, but really has nothing to do with what this website is about: California workers’ compensation, nerdy technobabble, and random silliness.

This other website proposed that I put up a link to their website here. Incoming website links are one of the primary tools search engines use to rank web pages, which is why people are always offering link exchanges. Google’s PageRank system ranks a website on a scale from 0 to 10, with 10 being the best. Like the Richter scale for earthquakes, PageRank scores require exponentially more energy to reach the next level.

These links to my site can be “high quality” because they are from a website that also deals with California workers’ compensation, nerdy technobabble, or random silliness. Or, they can be “low quality” because they have nothing to do with what my site is about.

In order to find out whether they were offering a high quality linkback, I checked out their website. On the right is a screenshot of their website. It has nothing whatsoever to do with workers’ compensation. The green circle is where they had the link to their “resources” page. The green box at the top is the only part of their page that’s visible when you go to their page.

So, not only were they offering me a low quality link, but they were offering me a low quality link that no one would ever look for, let alone find.

While they were clearly making a terrible offer, the idea that they looked up my website in order to solicit a link was amusing. My website’s gotten so big people want links from me! Blog bigtime, baby!

Bailouts for Everyone!

By Jay Shergill Posted on September 25, 2008 Posted in Business, Not Workers Compensation No Comments Tagged with Adjustable Rate Mortgages, Banks, Collapse, Crickets, Crickets Chirping, Doors, Financial Institutions, Home Loan, Interest Rate, Interest Rates, Introductory Rate, Lawns, Lt, Money, Population, Property Taxes, Taxpayers

Maybe I’m just being thick or just something here. Someone, please, explain this to me. Our president was adamant that home owners needed to learn a lesson about the free market and that the government would not bail them out of bad mortgages. A few weeks ago, $700 billion in bailouts for huge companies was also unthinkable. As of last night, our president tried to convince us that bailing out these companies is a good idea.

And, it probably is – that’s not the point. The point is that this seems a double standard. I realize that every major bank closing its doors overnight is not a good thing. Millions of people losing their homes is not good either. After all of this, I’ve got one question and one idea.

The Question:

Assuming (at the time I’m writing this) a U.S. population of 305,248,844 of which there are 138,000,000 taxpayers. Our government is about to spend $700,000,000,000 of our money. I figure that’s about $5,072.46 a person. Hey, what’s the worst that could happen if we passed that money out to the taxpayers? A complete collapse of our financial institutions overnight? HAHAhaha … um… ha? <crickets chirping>

The Idea:

The big problem right now isn’t so much the bad mortgages, its that people aren’t paying their mortgages. And, people aren’t paying their mortgages because they can’t afford the increased payments due to the higher interest rates from their adjustable rate mortgages. My idea is give everyone with an ARM the option to freeze their interest rate at their introductory rate.

Upsides:

Mortgages and property taxes get paid.
Lawns get mowed.
Banks get paid back.

Downsides:

People get to live in houses they can’t really afford. So what? At least they’re mowing their lawn.
I’ve just invented the 90 year home loan. Again, so what? That loan will have to be paid off before its sold – and they will sell it.
Banks get paid back slower than they thought. Its better than closing your doors, amiright WaMu?

Anyhow, I guess I’ll leave the economic policy up to the professionals. (’cause, you know, they’ve been doing a bang up job).

Category: PDRater