Hi! Welcome to GeekyFaust.
Hand-shake, I’m glad you dropped by. I am no writer expert and editor, expect some grammatical and spelling errors in the site.
I’m Faust Haeja Crismel Salabar Principe, the author behind this tech, news, and gadget review site.
Born on November 11, 1977, in Velez hospital and later one settled at Guadalupe Cebu City, Philippines, I’m the eldest son among four siblings of my father’s side Anthony Pepito Principe a doctor, and my mother Melba Guerrero Principe a nurse.
My biological mother is Rosalie Marinay Salabar who is notably known as DJ radio name call sign Pine Diaz, previously worked as radio announcer of Y101 Cebu.
As far I can remember during my childhood days, the spanning years in the 1977’s, the 1980s, and mid-1990s and above pave the way in my journey as a kid while growing up.
Sometime down the road, I somehow developed a gaming habit, I love playing a family computer.
It was a piece of gaming console with a red rectangular joystick side finish with a white body case, the cartridge in which the gaming software stored was a bit bulky or somewhat similar to a cassette tape, plugged in the gaming machine!
I think this was the first family computer console from Nintendo – I got hooked to it, a day is never complete without me playing the Nintendo console.
I still remember playing different Rambo versions, Contra Force, Star Wars, Arkanoid, and the all-time Super Mario 1,2,3.
The graphics are quite flat, with a 2D dimension, but still played until today I guess? with the likes of Nintendo DS, PSP Pocket, etc, and other handheld gaming consoles.
By 1991 I migrated to Davao City to pursue my studies with the guidance of my parents, curiously, from there I got a glimpse of an actual computer that my parents bought.
The computer system then was a 486 DX architecture clone with no math co-processor, with 1024 megabyte internal memory, black monochrome CRT Cathode Ray Screen, it looks like a bulky television screen connected to a Star Micronics dot matrix printer.
Loaded computer DOS, Disk Operating System-based games, and my all-time favorite were Wings of Fury, Prince of Persia, Carmen San Diego, Lemmings, Sango Fighters, Pacman, Galaga, Space Bats among others.
The operating system runs these games was DOS 6.22. Direct Access menu was a standard norm back in the days.
It was the menu management of choice for accessing, administrating, managing, and creating batch file processing linked to programs like the defunct WordStar a word processing software, and Lotus 123 for spreadsheets.
On top of it was Windows 3.1 – the GUI enhancement for DOS created by Microsoft. I also wrote some basic, simple computer programs in turbo basic, pascal, and a little study of assembly or machine language, acquired by learning from school and reading technical related books.
The logic and never-ending vast crunching of numbers were sheer and voluminous in size and caused me some memory buffer stack overflow, memory displacements, and therefore prone to such system crashes, I was not prepared for it, I decided to shift to another course and it lead me to a teaching profession.
Fast-forward…
In 2001, by his grace and blessing, I graduated as a Professional Teacher for Secondary Education at the University of Mindanao, Matina Campus.
Soon after I landed a job as a Computer Layout Artist at OrangeGrove Hotel in Buhangin, Davao City.
The job I took was quite a challenge, I was designated as head of design and took the helm of making catchy graphic, vector layouts, logos, sketch, es and illustrations for print.
It was presented to the hotel owner’s boss. It got a nod of approval, then submitted to a local newspaper for print, promotion, and advertisement purposes.
My preferred choice of graphic layout software was Coreldraw. I felt comfortable using it mainly because it was UI friendly, and for the most part I’m acquainted with the program after years of countless usage, from business cards and wedding invitations back then.
In addition to my job description, I was also tasked to do backdrop cut-outs made from new and recycled Styrofoam used for different occasions like; wedding, debuts, baptisms, etc.
A few months later…
The news broke about the licensure exam results for teachers. Excitement, tension, and worries were overwhelming. I scoured the internet for sources of results, double-checking, verifying.
To my surprise! I successfully passed the exams. Overjoyed, I told my parents over the telephone that I passed the exams! A Happy proud parent could not agree more.
Finally, I acquired a professional teaching license diploma and card from the Professional Regulation Commission
The year 2002, I was invited by the City Government of Davao to work for them with the help of my father as deputy mayor.
Assigned at the Planning Section under the Department of Education, Division of Davao City. Tasked to do data entry jobs for education statistics, like; enrollment data, performance indicators, etc. serving as decision-making tools for the delivery of basic education serving as an information system for teacher deployments, furniture, and school building needs analysis.
The year 2003, the Information Technology or Management Information System Officer-In-Charge position was vacant, the Schools Division Superintendent back then was Gloria P. Labor, Ed. D.
I placed me with marching orders, delegated me to take over and oversee the technology needs of the division.
From this point, there-on, I learned the ropes of the operation, how to set up, install, deploy, and manage servers. This could not be possible without the support – attended seminar enhancements, workshops related to Information Technology (IT).
The sponsors were glad to help us, funded by the Philippines Australia Basic Education Assistance for Mindanao (PA-BEAM) thru its IT Manager and friend Redentor Rola.
With the timely collaboration with the Department of Education Region XI and select Division IT Managers from different divisions, there was this need to develop, outline the needs of the division by showcasing its accomplishments thru a web-portal project as a result of the week-long technical training.
To develop a website from scratch for the DepEd Davao City Division Office, finally launching it at the Regional Level.
In the training, we configure, set up, streamline, harden software and hardware firewalls. We implement web content filtering, network health monitoring, lastly attending to user queries, and performing coma-inducing technical support, which was no easy task for a one-man army.
Things got sour.. work burnout… a fall-out with the management…
June 2008, I was reassigned to Manuel Roxas Elementary School under Sta. Ana District to work at the school guidance office doing menial jobs and later on introduced a website of their own.
As of July of 2011, finally, after serving approximately seven (7) and a half (1/2) years working as rank and file employee at the office, I applied for and landed a teaching job at Pablo Lorenzo Lorenzo National High School of Mandug, Buhangin, Davao City.
The rest is history in the making…
The technology blog GeekyFaust Philippines will be here to stay if it has to.
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