PDRater – PD calculators

1955 Packard 400

February has been a wacky month.  And, on Friday February 13th the 400th user registered for this website. [1] Since the 300th registered user, quite a lot has happened:

• Ogilvie, Almaraz/Guzman, and Benson came down.
• I wrote an Ogilvie DFEC Rebuttal Calculator.
• I added to my “Road Warrior Checklists”
  • Road Warrior Tip – Improving Long Drives
  • Road Warrior Checklist – Appearances
  • Road Warrior Checklist – Car
  • Road Warrior Checklist – Techie
  • Road Warrior Checklist – The Backpack
• I ordered inexpensive glasses online:
  • Cheap Online Glasses – Received!
  • Cheap Online Glasses?
• I wrote about Dell’s customer service:
  • Dell sent a tech to my home after hours for free to fix the motherboard on my out-of-warranty laptop
  • Dell offered to fix my out of warranty laptop
• I wrote about how to repair a laptop:
  • Repairing a laptop with a repair facility
  • How to decide whether to repair or replace a laptop
    • Hint: Scroll all the way down to the end of that post for a formula to help you decide whether you should repair or replace.
  • Repairing a laptop with the manufacturer
  • Repairing a laptop at a “big box” store
• I wrote about how NOT to build a successful website:[2]
  • How NOT to build a successful website: Frames
  • How NOT to build a successful website: Adobe Flash
• I wrote about How to Buy A New Laptop:[3]
  • How to Buy A New Laptop: Balancing Want and Need
  • How to Buy A New Laptop: Netbooks
• Besides being Friday the 13th, today has a very special meaning for the truly nerdy.  Unix is a computer operating system developed back in 1969.  For those of you who remember DOS, that kind of what it looked like.  The up-and-coming operating system Linux is based on Unix.  The Unix epoch, the time from which it starts to count “up”, was on January 1, 1970.  On 2/13/2009 at 6:31:30PM ET the Unix epoch reached the time “1234567890“.

1. Photo courtesy of atxbill [↩]
2. Trust me, its easier than it sounds… [↩]
3. I have several more of these planned [↩]

Wordpress Upgrade

I upgraded to WordPress v2.7.1 as soon as it came out (after testing on another website, of course).  I can honestly say WordPress is the only software I use that I actually look forward to upgrading.

Since version 2.7 RC 1, upgrading to the next version of WordPress has been this easy:

How to Upgrade WordPress

You click “Upgrade Automatically” and wait about 5 seconds.

You’re done.

Not entirely off topic: a friend of mine asked me yesterday about the best way to put up a new website.  She had thought about using Yahoo Site Builder or some such.  Yahoo and its like are great at building free, quick, and ugly websites.  If you’re going to publish on the internets, why not just opt for something just as easy and that has hundreds, if not thousands of possible totally free themes to choose from?  I say, go with WordPress.

I used to code sites by hand – that’s a chump’s game.  Just install WordPress and call it a day.

So Many Calclators, So Little Time

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.

1. Photo courtesy of teclasorg. [↩]

California Court of Appeals, First Appellate District

The First Appellate District of the Court of Appeal of the State of California has affirmed the Workers’ Compensation Appeals Board in Benson v. WCAB and the Permanente Medical Group, affirmed (2/10/2009).  The Court of Appeals held, in relevant part, that “[t]he Wilkinson doctrine is inconsistent with the apportionment reforms enacted by Senate Bill No. 899.”

The basic upshot is that barring “limited circumstances” each distinct industrial injury will require its own Award.

First Ogilvie and Almaraz/Guzman, now Benson?  Its been an exciting two weeks to be a Workers’ Compensation attorney.

Office of the Clerk

A modern hacker #1

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.

1. By “select group” I mean anyone who asked me if they could help. [↩]
2. Photo courtesy of gutter. [↩]