After some additional testing and feedback, I have launched the Ogilvie Calculator aka DFEC Calculator aka Diminished Future Earning Capacity Calculator.1
To all of my friendly beta-testers: Thank you!
So, what are you waiting for? Signing up for this website is totally free and takes 30 seconds. Log in, give it a whirl and let me know what you think.
I launched the Ogilvie DFEC Rebuttal Calculator on Saturday morning to a select group of beta-testers. 1 When I upgraded a person’s access to the website they had no problem seeing the workers’ compensation calculator.
Unfortunately, not one of them was able to actually use the thing. Last night my wife suggests the problem might be, “maybe they are using a different version or its not refreshed or something”?
And you know what? She was right. My wife, the hacker.2
I’ve written several protections into these calculators to insulate my users from having to deal with problems or bugs from newly installed code. I would much rather a user sees nothing than get a wrong answer. And nothing is exactly what my users saw. I had remembered to allow my beta testers to see the Ogilvie DFEC Rebuttal Calculator – but forgot to give them access to calculator.
So, the beta-test period will continue for another day or two while I await feedback from my users.
If you’d like to see what the Ogilvie DFEC Rebuttal Calculator looks like or want to try to use it, just sign up for free and shoot me an e-mail asking for access.
I’m going to delay the launch of the Ogilvie DFEC rebuttal calculator for a day or two. 1 I believe it works just fine, but I would like to test it a little more. This said, I will grant anyone who is interested access to this calculator.
Why the delay? Well…
The interesting thing about taking apart a set of calculations is that you find all sorts of “hidden steps” to the calculation. The majority in Ogilvie does a respectible job of going through the steps of this new formula and even gives several examples.
When performing most calculations one will need to round numbers at some point. However, rounding almost invariably takes place at the very end. In the case of the Ogilvie calculations, it appears that the WCAB rounds various figures throughout the calculation.
Even though the DFEC rebuttal calculator was giving correct answers, the fourth or fifth decimal places on some intermediary figures occasionally did not coming out right. It took me a little while to track down all the spots where the WCAB was implicitly rounding their figures (and to what decimal place!).
I am fairly confident the calculator will work without a hitch, but I’m going to test it a little more before I make it available to the public. If you’re interested in testing this Ogilvie DFEC rebuttal calculator, please drop me a line and let me know.
If you’re not a registered user for this website, its free to sign up and free to use all the workers’ compensation calculators. Seriously, free as in free!
Earlier today I installed an Ogilvie v. City and County of SF DFEC Rebuttal calculator into the free workers’ compensation calculators page on this website. 123 For the moment it is only available to people who have signed up for this website and asked to be a beta tester. If all goes well, I’ll flip a switch and make it available to the public on Monday morning.
At the moment it requires four pieces of information:
Once you add in that information, click “Calculate” and it should crunch through the formula and give you a response. The WCAB in Ogilvie suggested several possible outcomes to this formula:
Obviously, there are innumerable factors that go into considerations of whether a Judge (or the WCAB) would find the DFEC portion of the 2005 Permanent Disability Rating Schedule to be rebutted. This calculation and the information relied upon in performing this calculation cannot be taken as a guarranteed method of rebutting the DFEC portion of the 2005 Permanent Disability Rating Schedule.
If you’re not a registered user for this website, its free to sign up and free to use all the workers’ compensation calculators. That’s right: free as in free.
I put out the call for help testing my Ogilvie DFEC rebuttal calculator and got a bite! 1 I wrote it two days ago and refined it a little bit last night.2
If anyone else is interested in helping test this Ogilvie DFEC rebuttal calculator, please drop me a line and let me know.
The ideal tester is someone who:
If you’re not a registered user for this website, its free to sign up and free to use all the workers’ compensation calculators.
You heard me, free as in free.
Some crazy stuff has happened in the last two days. 1 Two big en banc decisions were just handed down from the WCAB. Here they are, hot off the presses and ready for downloading:
Of the two cases, I enjoyed Ogilvie v. City and County of San Francisco much more. This case describes to what extent the 2005 Permanent Disability Rating Schedule may be rebutted2 and how one might go about doing this.
Pages 22 through 32 are basically nothing but math. 3 These pages detail the information and methodology necessary to rebut the DFEC portion of the 2005 Schedule.
Last night I wrote a prototype calculator which will allow you to determine whether you may or may not be able to rebut the DFEC portion of the 2005 Permanent Disability Rating Schedule. This calculator would only perform the DFEC rebuttal calculations suggested in the majority opinion, since this is now the law of the land. My plan is to test it this weekend and launch it Monday.
However, if anyone is interested in helping me test it, I would appreciate the help. Just drop me a line and I’ll give you the link as soon as its ready.
In the meantime, if you want to crunch the numbers yourself (or follow along with the WCAB in Ogilvie), you will probably find Table A and Table B page 1-7 of the 2005 PDRS to be very helpful.
FYI, there are a lot of “footnotes” in Ogilvie that reference various online documents or websites. I’ve downloaded a copy or provided a screenshot of each of these pages for your reference:
Dell’s customer service has been my single greatest customer service experience with any product, ever.
Let me break it down for you:
Here’s Lionel’s e-mail to me from just after midnight this morning:
“Jay:
That’s great news. I’m really glad to see it all worked out smoothly. I appreciate you being a loyal Dell customer. Feel free to tell any other Dell customers how to contact me directly if they need some assistance.
It’s customer’s like you that make this the best job I’ve ever had.
Sincerely,
Lionel Menchaca
Chief Blogger, Dell Inc.
e-mail: lionel_menchaca@dell.com
Twitter: twitter.com/LionelatDell
phone: 512.728.8685″
If you’ve got an issue with your Dell, get a hold of Lionel directly. He’s an incredible guy working for an incredible company. Lionel and Dell took care of me. This Dell XPS m1210 is my third Dell laptop, and my next computer will absolutely be a Dell too.
I think Dell just made me a customer for life.
I’ve already spent nearly $200 repairing my laptop. After three total repairs1, my laptop finally died – again.
Since I had nothing to lose, I sent an e-mail to Dell’s head blogger, Lionel Menchaca about my problem. He was lightning fast in responding to me – asking for my Dell service tag.2
When Dell had lost my prior laptop and replaced it with the XPS m1210 I purchased a warranty extension. I had spent a fair bit of change on that laptop and I was expecting to keep it around a while. However, that extended warranty lapsed a little over a year ago.3 I explained my problem with the bad nVidia video card. He responded telling me that I would be getting a call from someone soon.
Sure enough, less than a day later I received a call from Dell’s corporate customer service program. They told me that as a “gesture of good will” they were going to replace my computer’s motherboard – by sending a technician to me to do the repair.
Replacing a motherboard is so expensive its almost always cheaper to buy a new computer. Offering to repair an out-of-warranty laptop by sending a tech to me to replace the motherboard???
All I can say is WOW.
Yesterday I discussed the basics of buying a new computer. The most important first step is figuring out what you need and what you want out of a new computer. There are three main types of portable computers available these days: netbooks, basic laptops, and high-end laptops. Today is all about “netbooks.”1
(Scroll to the end to see my picks…)
A netbook is a very small laptop designed to extremely mobile and portable. They are optimized for portability and wireless connectivity.
Netbooks typically have a display of 10″ or less. 2 They usually don’t have any CD or DVD drives. 3 They usually have very small solid state drives or mid-sized hard drives. On the plus side, they usually have bluetooth, media card readers, and WiFi. They’re typically between 2 to 3 pounds, depending upon brand and type of battery. They’re also relatively cheap – between $350 to $500.
My requirements may differ from yours. If I were to buy a netbook, I would want:
Other things people might care about (but I don’t):
Keep in mind, I’ve never used any of these laptops – I’m just evaluating them based on their prices and my own opinions as to their respective brands and specs. Although, I’m enough of a nerd that I put together a spreadsheet to compare those five netbooks as well as about another dozen or so models and submodels. If anyone is interested in seeing the spreadsheet, mention it in the comments below or drop me a line.
Dell has a new netbook too, but it only has solid state drive options – which are too small to be of use to me. 4 However, I’m sure it would be perfect for some people.
My picks are, in rough order of preference:
If I were to buy a netbook today, I’d probably go for the Acer Aspire One. It occupies a sweet spot in terms of price, is a decent brand, and has very comparable specs to the higher-end models.
Next, basic laptops!
Unfortunately, its that time again. When my laptop died for the first time I got it repaired. When it died again, it had the good manners to at least do so within the repair warranty.
My trusty sidekick died for the third and final time on December 31, 2008.1
Now its time to get a new laptop. I’m reluctant to buy another Dell. Dell installed nVidia graphics chips on the motherboard. Those nVidia chips have a critical flaw in that they overheat and pull away from the motherboard. Sound familiar? Well, this was the exact problem I was having with my laptop. Apparently this problem has spawned a lawsuit against nVidia.
I’m undecided what kind of laptop I want/need. A netbook? A basic laptop? A high-end laptop?2
Its all about what you want and what you need. I need a laptop that will let me program, surf the web, listen to music, and send e-mail. This accounts for roughly 98% of my computer usage.
The last 2% of computer usage is comprised of processor intensive activities such as watching DVD’s, video games, video editing, DVD and CD burning, and manipulating large amounts of programming code. For instance, the WCAB legacy number to EAMS number converter involved more than 4.6 million lines of code. 3 My previous laptop struggled with that one. I probably only do these things once every six months or so.
For what I need, a netbook would actually work very well for me.
As any computer user knows, its very frustrating to have a computer that will not do what you want or takes to long to do it. My wants are a super slim, light-weight, battery efficient, computer that has the processing power to deal with large amounts of data and the ability to burn DVD’s and CD’s.
A netbook fulfills the wants of a slim, light-weight, and battery efficient computer. A basic laptop would suffice for the processing power and CD/DVD burning capabilities.
When it comes to laptops, sometimes you can have it all – it just depends how you’re going to compromise.
What am I going to get? I’m going to run down the pro’s and con’s of netbooks, basic laptops, and high-end laptops next time. Stay tuned!
