PDRater – PD calculators

It turns out that this website is actually in the top 5% of all blogs in the WORLD.  Where did I get this incredible statistic?  The Internets, of course.[1]

While there are some 133,000,000 blogs in the world, all but 7,400,000 of them have been abandoned. [2]  Since I add a blog post on average at least once a week, I’m quite safely in the top 7.4 million blogs.  That doesn’t even count the number of updates to the permanent impairment and permanent disability calculators.

Top 5%!  I wish I had prepared a speech.

1. Photo courtesy of Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com [↩]
2. Apparently not updating a blog in four months is considered abandoning it. [↩]

This phone will not run PDRater calculators, but yours might!

I recently discovered that installing the Opera Mini web browser on my “smartphone” has allowed me to run this website’s workers’ compensation calculators from my phone.[1]

Since launching this website I’ve given a lot of thought to support for cell phones.  There just are not many phones that can run these calculators.[2] The glaring and notable exception is the iPhone.

Amusingly, one of this website’s users has asked for an “iPhone app” version of this site.  Seriously, you’ve got one of the few phones that can use this site and that’s not good enough for you?  (Thanks Chris!)

This is huge.  It means:

• I can blog from the Board[3]
• More importantly, no more bulky money charts or rating manuals at the Board!

1. Photo courtesy of storm gal [↩]
2. It would be more correct to say there are not many phones that support javascript and AJAX well enough to interact with this website in a meaningful fashion. [↩]
3. Probably a lot more interesting for me than it is for you… [↩]

PDRater: No Bills!

To this day, most of the e-mails I receive are from people asking me some variation of “No, really, how much does it cost to use these calculators? When am I going to be charged? What’s the catch?”

I intend to keep all the calculators free for anyone who cares to use them. I have built this website because I really do enjoy the hell out of blogging about tech stuff and workers’ comp law, dissecting complex workers’ compensation math formulas, and building something useful to myself and other professionals. This is quite literally how I spend my free time. I’m just that nerdy.

Thank you for the feedback!

I was recently sent feedback about the Ogilvie DFEC rebuttal calculator on this website. [1]  Here’s how I’ve incorporated that feedback:

1. Inputs. The calculator results repeats the inputs with the results.  This ensures that the answer provided gives you enough context when showing the calculation to the other side or when you go back to review your file.
2. Email. You can now e-mail your calculations to yourself.
3. Links. I’ve added a link to the various Employment Development Department and U.S. Dept of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics inside the calculator itself.  It doesn’t automatically obtain the information, but hopefully you will find this helpful.

There are two other issues I’m thinking about:

1. An easy way to pull up the FEC rank of a particular body part.  Its kind of a pain to look up the body part, find the FEC rank, and then enter that into the calculator.  I’m thinking ways to simplify this process.  This shouldn’t be too bad to write.
2. Rating using the Ogilvie DFEC adjusted whole person impairment.  This one will prove to be a difficult one to write in an intuitive fashion.

How would you change these calculators?  What else would you like to see?  What do you hate about them?  Shoot me an e-mail or leave a comment!

1. Photo courtesy of biketrouble [↩]

Re-ordering can be good!

You may have noticed a few cosmetic changes in the look of the workers’ compensation calculators. [1] It turns out that some of the calculators are getting a LOT more use than others.

1. In order to make them a easier to use, I’ve re-ordered all of the calculators in rough order of popularity. [2] Hopefully you’ll find this helpful.  Eventually I plan to separate out all of the EAMS related search functions from the actual benefits calculators.
2. I’ve found that when you click to expand a calculators it would cause the entire page to scroll to the top.  I’ve fixed this.

Send me an e-mail and let me know or leave a comment!

1. Photo courtesy of Sock Monkey Photography [↩]
2. This change only affects the order in which you see the calculators and has nothing to do with how they work. [↩]