Thursday, April 28, 2011

'Kinoxville' restaurant scores

R. Neal kills me sometimes. He has a hilarious post (click right here) about the state's so-called “award winning Legislative Information Services team.”

He talks about the new website Lt. Gov. Ron Ramsey launched today. Or kind of launched. As Neal says: “There's a policy section but there's nothing there. Seems about right.”

Heh.

Anyhoo, it got me to thinking about a story I wrote back in July (click right smack here for it) about restaurant inspection scores. Someone called me up and said they couldn't access Knox County scores on the the health department's website.

That's because it takes you over to the state's site. When I went there, in bright red letters, it said; “Notice! Disclosure of Public Health records has been terminated by the State.”

WTF?

So, I called them. Got a bunch of BS, wrote a story. The next day, the Website said something like “temporarily disabled.” Or whatever. I can't remember. Anyway, the fella they had a contract with – someone out in North Carolina – called me that day to tell his story. I missed his call. Then he never returned mine. This went on for months.

I forgot about it.

Eventually, one day I called the state to get an update because the site was still down. Folks there didn't really want to talk about it. Now, keep in mind that when public officials don't answer questions, it means (a) they don't like you or (be) they have something to hide. (Technically, I suppose, it could be both.)

Well, I can't recall making anyone over there upset, so I suppose they're hiding something. You know, cause it's the state and all. And it's government. And whatever.

I'm getting long-winded here, I know.

But, after reading Neal's post (did I mention it's pretty funny?), I headed over to the state health department's website to see if they finally had the restaurant inspection scores back on line. Well, hell, it's hard to say. Click right smack here and you'll know what I mean.

It's either (a) not going to redirect you, or (b) redirect you to right smack here.

OK, got that, now look to the left and you'll see a list of cities. You, know, cause you might want to check out the scores. Now look for “Knoxville.”

They've managed to spell it three different ways.

I hope the crack pot team of award winning tomato cans isn't responsible for this.

Or our copy editors.

Heh.

4 comments:

Brian Paone said...

So is the award-winning Legislative Information Services team also called SoloStream?

Because that's who built the template, which is the bulk of any WordPress site. It's the WP-Genius theme:

http://www.solostream.com/demo/wp-genius.html

...and it looks like all the award-winning team did was switch around a few module positions and uploaded their content.

Don't get me wrong - they did an award-winning job switching around the modules some and uploading their content. But it's rather disingenuous of them to suggest they "built" the site when all they did is install a bunch of stuff and replace the sample content with their own.

I mean, they could have at least changed the colors some.

Brian Paone said...

Oh, and since Neal was asking about the price tag, the theme probably only cost the taxpayers $129.

Mike Donila said...

Ha, ha. If it even cost that much.

Brian Paone said...

It had to have cost at least $129, since the footer link is removed. The $79 template requires the linkback to SoloStream be left in the footer section of the page.

Of course, there's always the possibility that the template's a cracked one. But I doubt anyone would be stupid enough to use a cracked template for a governmental application.

...oh, wait. Forgot where I was for a second.