(Maint) Remove ||= of constant

Using ||= made the tests fail if run in a certain order under ruby
1.8.7. It turns out that most of the shortenings weren't really needed
and also the or was needed because the configuration of rspec was being
altered by one of the tests.
(Maint) Remove test scaffolding self-tests

There was a bunch of duplicated testing system tests. They aren't
needed.