*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!

  1. Retroactive Benefits Calculator
  2. Convert WCAB and DWC “legacy” numbers into the new EAMS ADJ numbers
  3. Search with all EAMS registered Offices
  4. EAMS Body Part Codes search engine
  5. EAMS Document Type and Title search engine
  6. EAMS and DWC forms search engine

The World Ended on 9/10/2008

Laptop Repair Saga

Road Warrior Checklists

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

EAMS Logo
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.

Calculator
Calculator

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 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.