I was pretty shocked when checking out the website statistics today. In just one week, I managed to get over two hundred unique visitors to my blog. Many were drawn to my entry on fixing your Wii’s internet channels after taking out the battery. Welcome to the blog everyone!

I will also keep adding some new content about Saint John and the area. It’s a great place to live, and we are too modest about it! So here are some local sites that you might find useful:

Tourism Saint John - Provides information on all the event going on in the city. I would also recommend signing up for the newsletter. You can also submit your events for the newsletter by emailing the information to culturalaffairs@saintjohn.ca.

City of Saint John Website - Provides information on the city’s services along with contact information for the departments and councilors.

Saint John - Life on Your Terms - Provides all the information you need for living and working in Saint John!

Jobs in Saint John - Here is an excellent listing of jobs in Saint John.

If you know some other good websites, just contact me and let me know!

Saint John is a unique city. Unlike other cities in the Maritimes, Saint John is divided into several distinct neighbourhoods by its citizens. It is generally not enough to say you are from Saint John. You typically must specify the neighbourhood and hope that the person you are speaking to is from your neighbourhood, or at least a friendly neighbourhood. Failure to do so may indicate you are from out of town and possible from Moncton. I would suggest running now.

Here is a map of the various neighbourhoods:

I know that it can be hard for people to really understand what it’s like in each of the neighbourhoods, especially when you live and work on one side for your entire life. So, to better our knowledge, I will begin a multi part series where I will provide my overview of each of Saint John’s sides. Today, we begin with the East Side.

The East Side

Enter the East Side

The East Side really starts when you cross the causeway from the South End. You will know this is happening because the smell of March creek will really punch you in the face. When the smell fades, you are officially in the East Side. At this point in time, you will begin to enter the famous fog belt. If you are lucky, you will eventually break through and reach the mall.

The Mall

The mall is what makes the East Side the Side that all the other Sides are jealous of. “The Mall” typically represents McAllister Place, Parkway, and all the surrounding stores and strip malls. People will travel from all sides, and even from outside the city, to go shopping here. The mall is the East Sides greatest natural resource.

Heavy Industry

The East Side is also home to a lot of heavy industry, including Canada’s largest refinery. This can easily be spotted from the big stacks with flames shooting out of them. Sometimes they will also spew dark clouds of clean pollution (according to Irving Oil).

Heres our first East Side fun fact: contrary to popular belief, Irving Oil only owns 74.6% of the East Side and not 78% as often quoted. This popular misconception can be blamed on a misprint in the Telegraph Journal.

Rothesay Avenue

Another feature of the East Side is the large percentage of car dealerships per square kilometre. They are all easily located on the busiest street in the city Rothesay Avenue. Typically I would joke about how terrible the road conditions are, but they have improved a great deal. You are only likely to hit several potholes on the way to purchase that new car.

Although, if you are trying to find the Toyota dealership good luck. Just look at this awful map they provide on their website. Honestly now, they couldn’t have provided a worse map. The best part is that on their webpage, they actually say for the driving directions that the map directions are enough.

Conclusion

The East Side has all the good stores and lots of things to do. Although it tends to be windy, cold, and foggy, this does not dampen the mood of East Siders. You are now officially up to speed on the East Side. If there is anything I have missed, feel free to comment or email me! Stay tuned for the next part: The West Side!

I just happened to see a clip of this on the ATV evening news earlier. This is something you really have to see! The lucky kid received 30 stitches and was sent home. The best part is what the kid says after the incident: “It was kind of scary cause I got bonked by the football,” the boy said, hugging his own football. “It kind of hurted.”

Well, if you happen to be in this situation (or you just took out the internal battery to have a look), don’t stress. It can be fixed, although it will be a little tedious. After an extensive search using Google, I finally found a forum post that gave a solution. I’m showing the steps again in the hopes that it makes it easier for someone else to find this fix. I have also added some of my own comments after going through the process. The fix goes a little like this:

1. Backup your game saves to your SD card. Backup your Miis to your controller. (Note: Don’t bother backing up any channels or virtual console games, you will need to download these again using the Shop channel).
2. Reformat the Wiis internal memory (found on third page of the Wii options).
3. Turn the Wii back on and go through initial setup to completion. You do not need to setup the internet yet.
4. Turn the Wii off and remove the lithium battery panel along with the battery. It’s the silver screw on bottom side of the Wii.
5. Turn the Wii back on (with the battery still removed) and again reformat internal memory
6. When the Wii turns off after the reformat, unplug the power for ten minutes (with the battery still removed).
7. Plug the Wii back in. Turn on the Wii and again go through the initial setup to completion (with the battery still removed).
8. Enter your internet settings and run the internet connection test.
9. Go to WiiConnect24 and make sure you have it set to ON (Standby is also turned ON).
10. Make sure you accept the Internet User Agreement.
11. Now start up the News channel. You should now get your news updates.
12. Go to the Weather channel and go through the setup. You should now get your weather updates.
13. Now, insert each of your Wii games to create the initial save game. Delete the initial save game, then copy the saved games from the SD card to your Wii. (Note: It wouldn’t let me copy the save games until I did this).
14. Create a new Mii using the Mii channel, then copy your Miis from the controller to your Wii. Delete the new Mii when you are finished. (Note: This process seemed to screw up my Wii Sports save game. It forgot all the scores for my Miis).
15. Finally, turn off the Wiis power. Reinstall the battery and battery panel (make sure battery faces correct way), and your done

I did this a week ago and it’s been working perfect ever since. The whole back up process is incredibly tedious on the Wii, something that could use some improvement, but regardless, I’m just glad its back to normal.

We all remember the power glove, but few of us can say we actually had one. I was one of those fortunate kids. This really allows me to empathize with this guys review, which I would highly recommend you check out!

Taxes?

There are times when raising taxes are necessary to pay for what citizens want. In 1917, the government of Canada started taxing income to help pay for the war effort. Although this was meant to be a temporary measure (but continues to this day), nobody would argue that this was an unnecessary tax at the time.

Flash forward to the present day. We are now faced with a government that has decided to raise business taxes for the first time since 1994, when the last liberal government was running the show.

Why Complain?

So why do I bother to complain? I want good health care. I was safe roads. I want a good education. I understand and accept that taxes pay for off of these. But, at what point does raising taxes stop paying for what I, as a citizen, want? This occurs when the money raised by raising taxes is spent immediately for something I don’t want. This is what has occurred in the case of Caisse de Shippagan. This is a credit union that failed horribly at running its business.

The Details

• Raising business taxes will raise $52 million dollars. (Raising personal tax will raise another $50 million dollars.)
• The province will give $41 million dollars to Caisse de Shippagan. (Saint John harbour cleanup was only $27 million dollars.)

Does this make you scratch your head? Why should every company in the province pay higher taxes? What do they get in return? The money simple goes to another company that is incapable of running itself. Shawn Graham, welcome to the real world. If you can’t run a business, then it goes out of business. Sorry, I’m no economics professor, but I think that’s fairly easy to understand.

Canadian Taxpayer Federation

John Williamson (of the Canadian Taxpayer Federation) recently made some very good points:

“I’d want to know why taxes are going up to pay for bailouts, as opposed to having governments spend money in priority areas.

“Governing is all about making choices and prioritizing spending. In this case, we have a government which has obviously decided that saving a credit union is worthwhile, despite the fact that no one from the province seems able to explain why it’s in the province’s interest, or why it’s in the taxpayer’s interest, to be spending this kind of money.”

Is it just me, or does he make complete sense? How is this so hard to understand? I’m glad people are standing up to question pointless spending of our money!

If you care, do something!

Taxes should be raised to pay for things that citizens in the province want, not to bail out a failed company. If this bothers you, email you MLA, email the premier, tell them you don’t find this acceptable. Next election, get out and vote for someone else, as this waste will continue until we change things!

Will Farrell meets his match when Pearl shows up to collect the rent!

Watch it here. The YouTube videos have been removed.

And now you’ve decided to read my blog. Excellent. The first part of my plan is on track. Next is ???. And then comes profit.

Now there are a few items I plan to start blogging about including: funny internet videos, technology, politics, Saint John, and programming. I hope to add my take along with some sarcastic, but witty, comments.

So start sending me anything you think is interesting, add some positive comments about my grammar, and check back for updates!