diff --git a/src/test/R/test-interrupt-mr.R b/src/test/R/test-interrupt-mr.R
index bce9bc1..b6a7552 100644
--- a/src/test/R/test-interrupt-mr.R
+++ b/src/test/R/test-interrupt-mr.R
@@ -88,8 +88,8 @@ test_that("start simple mr job asynchronously, then kill it", {
    
    # check for output from the killed job 
    # (if irisMax exists, it should only contain logs)
-   expect_true(!is.element("/tmp/rhipeTest/irisMax", rhls()$file) | 
-       all(regexpr("_logs$", rhls("/tmp/rhipeTest/irisMax")$file)>=0), 
+   expect_true(!is.element(file.path(test.dir, "irisMax"), rhls()$file) | 
+       all(regexpr("_logs$", rhls(file.path(test.dir, "irisMax"))$file)>=0), 
        label="there is no output from killed job")
    
 })
diff --git a/src/test/R/test-simple-mr.R b/src/test/R/test-simple-mr.R
index a9676a9..cb68d1b 100644
--- a/src/test/R/test-simple-mr.R
+++ b/src/test/R/test-simple-mr.R
@@ -13,14 +13,8 @@ test_that("clean rhoptions()$HADOOP.TMP.FOLDER/rhipeTest and set working directo
    if(rhexists(test.dir))
       rhdel(test.dir)
 
-<<<<<<< HEAD
    rhmkdir(test.dir)
    hdfs.setwd(test.dir)
-=======
-   # TODO: add test to see if rhmkdir honors working directory
-   rhmkdir("/tmp/rhipeTest")
-   hdfs.setwd("/tmp/rhipeTest")
->>>>>>> 5a0baebfbc19fae8e12422123722f504032d2cd5
 })
 
 test_that("simple mr job setup", {
@@ -37,20 +31,6 @@ test_that("simple mr job setup", {
 })
 
 test_that("run simple mr job", {
-<<<<<<< HEAD
-    # map code for computing range
-    rangeMap <- rhmap({
-       by(r, r$Species, function(x) {
-          rhcollect(
-             as.character(x$Species[1]),
-             range(x$Sepal.Length)
-          )
-       })
-    })
-    expect_true("rhmr-map" %in% class(rangeMap))
-=======
-   # rhoptions(runner = "/share/apps/R/3.0.2/bin/R CMD /share/apps/R/3.0.2/lib64/R/library/Rhipe/bin/RhipeMapReduce --slave --silent --vanilla")
-   
    # map code for computing range
    rangeMap <- rhmap({
       by(r, r$Species, function(x) {
@@ -60,7 +40,6 @@ test_that("run simple mr job", {
          )
       })
    })
->>>>>>> 5a0baebfbc19fae8e12422123722f504032d2cd5
    
    # reduce code for computing max
    rangeReduce <- expression(