Information

Who are we?

We, currently as this site is being put together is Mark and Shirin Thomas. We put our picture on this site, so our neighbors would finally get to meet us. Isn't that a shame! We have lived in Greenwood subdivision for 1 year and 8 months as of July 2003, and have spoken to members of 8 households, and spoke to an additional 2 on the phone. I would say that we have not made our rounds. We live at 20100 Richland Dr. Welcome!

When I get a little time, I'll tell you a bit about us. I had previously typed this, and somehow I ended up misplacing it, so this time, it will be brief.

I am 40, and my lovely wife Shirin is 41. I was born in Florida, lived in Austin, Texas, New Orleans, La, and moved to Bogalusa in my 9th year of school. Graduated in 1981 and worked several small jobs, getting hired at WCI 4 weeks before it opened. Eight years later, I moved to Baton Rouge, to pursue a computer career. I spent 12 years in computers. The last 8 or nine years was heavily into networking, Wans and the Internet. I am a Master Certified Netware Engineer with a lot of hardware, software, desktop, server, application server, and project management experience. Quite a bit of high speed transfer technologies including Cisco routers and switches. Last contract was maintaining a crew of 3 maintaining 300 computers, 3 Novell Servers, 14 NT servers, desktops, 3 remote wan sites, interconnects with overseas and other American companies. Remote dialin, and the list goes on.

My wife Shirin was born in Tehran, Iran. She moved to France at the age of 17, just before the Revolution, and the 8 year long war with Mr. Sadamm Hussain. I never quite figured out how Shirin survived in France. When she got there, she did not understand any French. And it is my understanding that French High Schools far surpass our own schools by 5 or 6 years. Lots and lots of philosophical classes. How anyone could go to school, and learn a language while you were supposed to learn whatever was being taught is beyond me! But, she made it! And did very well. After 7 years in France, she moved to Norway and stayed there for 12 years. After that she came to the USA. She came to study in the Seminary. First in St. Louis, Mo, then Atlanta, Ga, then New Orleans, La. We met in Atlanta, Ga, got married, and moved back here so she could finish her degree. She holds two Masters Degrees. One in In-Organic Analytical Chemistry, and one in Divinity-Specializing in Biblical Languages (Greek and Hebrew). So she is fluent in French, Norwegian, Persian, and English. She can study Greek and Hebrew. She has been here in the US for 4 years, and speaks better English than I do!

Anyway, the reason that you have met us this way, is that we simply want Internet access, and did not see why we should not all have it. It was down to a choice of either moving into town, and taking an income from a rental to convert it into a daytime office, or get 2 way Satellite. The last option was purchasing a T1 for around $700/month. Satellite is not all what it is cracked up to be, but I was really having an issue between giving up the rent, and having an office in town, or the T1 out here. So, sitting on the back porch just a few afternoons ago, I started thinking. I wonder how many other people would enjoy the access around here?

It would not be a very difficult project to get 15 names together, and then get standard DSL from one of the ISP's that contract in this area.

But what if they really could see the light! Man would it be Awesome to have a tight knit group of people here sharing an Internet/Network together. I had built quite a few. So I sat there for about another 15 minutes, crunching some numbers in my head, and figured, it would be an injustice if I did not try it!

I could just see myself two years from now, when DSL finally got around to a standard installation, hearing half of my neighbors wishing they had had it 3 years ago. I would have felt pretty worthless to not have tried.

So what has it cost me? Well, as I sit here on 08/30/2003 at 3:53 A.M., I'm thinking about a little sleep, and a little more time. To develop a web site that will show those that look at it, that it is not just another petition that will get dumped in the garbage, but there was effort put into the project, before you were presented with it. And what do we ask from you? If you are serious about having High Speed Internet Access, sign up with us, and lets work towards it together. If you think that you are only willing to pay $35.00 for Internet Access, sign up anyway. It just might come to that, or less! You will only know if we know you are interested.

Wouldn't it be terrible if you and 4 of your friends did not sign up, and it we were 5 people away from getting access for $35.00 each. Hmmmmm!

So Click Here for the Sign up page!

Remember, this is for the Bogalusa Area, North West of Town. It will include Greenwood, Timberlane, Woodward and others in that general vicinity. Timberlane Subdivision, and the Lake area.

There is a second form for people in other areas of Bogalusa. We will get our project running, and then after we get the bugs worked out, we can duplicate this as many times as it takes to get as many groups involved as wish to do so.

Thanks for taking the time to evaluate our materials, and we hope to partner with you!

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