April Fools!… Oh Wait, It’s Still March
Thanks to a “glitch” caused by “routine computer maintenance,” a whole bunch of inmate release notices were sent out to victimized families. Eight thousand of them to be exact. Eight. Thousand. Just one of which was in regard to an inmate jailed for murdering two young girls in Oregon City. If you’re thinking this is the worst thing to happen since KISS, you’d be right. The worst damn thing since Andrew Clarke taped Larry Lester’s buns together. I mean, good lord, this is messed up.
Examining this “glitch,” let me break it down for you. Glitch is, of course, a nonsense word used in PR campaigns to simplify a problem that likely implicates someone in a bungle, or perhaps a shenanigan. In this case, a large update to the system flipped the toggles of 1,891 inmates’ release statuses. According to the horse’s mouth, I should be mentioning something about the fact that it was a large update, with about 15,000 files… but… the size of the update has less than nothing to do with it. So, sucks for them.
The system itself, called the Victim Information and Notification Everyday, is used in a grand total of 47 states. Surely those states experienced the same problem when updating, right? Nope. Just here. The Corrections Department assures everyone that Appriss, the contractor that built the system, has informed those that received the erroneous notifications twice that it was a mistake.
Personally, I think they should have shown up on their doorsteps with one of those giant checks they give out at charity events and some serious Taco Bell.
A Deadline to End All Deadlines
Oh sh*t Corvallisites: the deadline to remove your vehicle’s studded tires is coming up next week on March 31. Oh no, what are we going to do?!
Actually, if you live in Corvallis and really did put your studded tires on this season… thanks for contributing to the $8.5 million in damage the Oregon Department of Transportation says they inflict on Oregon roadways every year. Jerk.
Tillamook Residents Done with the Stank
Though the Tillamook Dairy, responsible for such hits as sour cream, has been around for 150,000 years, local residents are now deciding they’re fed up with the smell of like a zillion cows crapping 100 pounds each a day. And by residents I mean a couple of people in a recent city council meeting. I know what you’re thinking, but it wasn’t a typo—I said Tillamook, not Corvallis. But then again, read on… it really does sound a lot like Corvallis.
The complaints lodged have lit fires under the rears of a few reporters at The Tillamook Headlight Herald, where they’re probably exhausted trying to come up with interesting stories in a town where not much happens that doesn’t involve cheese. The “dairy air,” as they call it, reeks of health concerns and other miscellaneous, unnamed risks. Because that is quite literally total bullsh*t, the default everyone falls back on next is that the smell drives away tourism. And why do tourists visit Tillamook? Drum roll… ::imagine drum sounds here::… that’s right, the dairy factory. ::drum crash::
So some people hate the smell, some people are okay with it or even like it (weirdos), and as far as anyone knows nothing can be done because the dairy is quite literally the only reason the town exists. But despite this a few individuals who are just crazy enough to go to city council meetings will insist on going Drama Lite on everyone’s asses because they hold their NIMBY sensibilities in such high regard that… hold on.
We are talking about Corvallis.
Oregon Proves Standardized Testing Is Still Dumb
I think the best way to approach this topic is a bit sloppy, forceful, and perhaps abstract, so hold on to your hats…
Oregon has new tests called Smarter Balanced exams and the legislators be all like “heyyy” and teachers are freaking out over how much time they will take and how much students will suck at them and parents are wondering whether they should opt their kids out and administrators are defending the tests and think the best way to iron out problems is to let the first few rounds of kids suffer and test makers are countin’ their dolla bills y’all and the students are just like, FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUHHHHHH.
That could actually have gone on a lot longer, but I’ve got word-count constraints and The Man (Steve Schultz) won’t give me a break. And yeah, okay, that was more run-on sentence than anything else, but I think I got the point across.
Students already have CPTs, ACTs and SATs… and the benefit of those is pretty questionable outside of college entrance exams that do little but make you pay 10 times more for your first two years of university than you would if you just started at a community college. Do we really need to engage in all of this nonsense? It seems ironic that the bureaucratic slapdoodles of our society are so caught up in testing students’ knowledge that they forgot to put any effort into giving them knowledge.
And that’s all I’ve got to say about that.
By Johnny Beaver
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