☰ MARK PARSONS ☰

👤 About Mark Parsons

🏆 From Burlington to Brantford

Mark was born in Burlington, Ontario — the same city where Hamilton goes to look nice and where the water smells faintly of adventure. After many years of navigating the treacherous Burlington Transit system (it has only one bus, and it's named Steve), Mark eventually made the heroic move to Brantford, Ontario, where he now resides and operates his computer repair business.

Brantford, Canada — also known as "The Phone City" because Alexander Graham Bell supposedly invented the telephone there, which means every house in Brantford has at least 3,400 unused telephone jacks just in case Mark needs to connect a fax machine again (he doesn't, but he likes the aesthetic).

🛠 What Mark Does

Mark is a professional computer technician who repairs computers and helps people with technology. Whether it's a PC that makes a sound like a angry lawnmower, a laptop that won't boot, or someone asking "why won't it print? I restarted it five times" — Mark is there to help.

📚 What People Think Mark Does

According to Mark's mother: "Oh, he works with computers. He's very good at it."

According to Mark's friends: "We call him when the internet breaks and also when someone says 'have you tried turning it off and on again?'"

According to Mark himself: "I fix computers. Sometimes I also teach people how to use a mouse without punching the screen."

🛠 Mark's Tech Services

Mark offers a comprehensive range of computer repair and technology assistance services to the Brantford community and beyond. Because everyone needs someone who understands the difference between RAM and ROM (it's like the difference between a short-term memory and a long-term memory, but for computers).

🌐 Mark's Ideal Home Network Fortress

Mark doesn't just plug a router in and hope for the best. No, no, no. Mark builds network fortresses that would make a fortress fortress fortress fortress fortress (the word fortress can be repeated as many times as needed in this context).

🔒 OPNsense: The Cornerstone of Security

At the heart of Mark's ideal home network lies OPNsense — the open-source firewall and routing platform that turns a regular computer into a serious security appliance. OPNsense is Mark's weapon of choice for keeping unwanted visitors OUT, while keeping his downloads IN. It's like having a bouncer for your home network who also knows about NAT rules.

📌 Why OPNsense?

OPNsense gives Mark granular control over every packet entering and leaving his network. He's talking traffic filtering, VPN tunnels, captive portals, and content filtering — all on a system he built himself, running on hardware he chose, configured with the precision of a Swiss watch designed by a paranoid ninja.

🔧 Additional Fortress Layers

Beyond OPNsense, Mark's network fortress includes:

• Hardware firewall with custom rules that would confuse an alien
• Ad-blocking DNS for the entire household
• Guest network isolated from the main LAN (guests are trustworthy, but their phones are not)
• Backup power supply because a brownout is no reason for the fortress to fall
• A label maker so everyone knows which cable is which (most important tool ever)

🕐 The Mark Parsons Timeline

A brief (and only slightly biased) chronology of Mark's journey from a kid in Burlington who discovered computers to the computer technician of Brantford.

🏆 Awards & Recognition

Mark has received numerous accolades throughout his distinguished career in computer repair and technology assistance:

📧 Contact Mark

Have a computer problem? Need help with technology? Want to discuss the merits of OPNsense over pfSense (this is a rhetorical question — the answer is OPNsense)? Get in touch: