About
About the Author
My name is Jay Shergill and I am a workers’ compensation defense attorney in Northern California. I have been working in Workers’ Compensation since 2002. In addition to being an attorney, I am also a self-taught web based programmer.
As I’ve suggested on this website, I’m a nerd. This website is built using open source Wordpress blogging software. (Nearly) every version of this site and its calculators were built using PHP and MySQL. I wrote many of the plugins that control how this website looks and operates - from the nifty rounded corners to the grayed out screen on the calculator page when you’re not logged in.
I use Thunderbird for e-mail instead of Outlook and OpenOffice instead of Microsoft Office.
I get my news 80% from NPR, 10% from blogs/RSS feeds, and 10% from The Daily Show.
Oh, and I wear glasses.
About PDRater.com
For those of you who are interested in such things: the earliest versions of this website were written in javascript and PHP. The most recent version is written in javascript, PHP, MySQL, and AJAX with a Wordpress framework.
I launched this website on July 23, 2007 as a foray into programming and as a free service to anyone who wanted to be able to quickly perform the (sometimes) tedious calculations necessary in workers’ compensation. While these calculations are not terribly complicated, the work involved in calculating benefits over the life of a claim can become unwieldy.