[AT&T, Rogers, Bell, Telus Samsung Galaxy S III] Wiltron:
I traded an iPhone 4S with a gentleman from Kijiji for his Galaxy S3, around the time when the iPhone 5 was announced. Myself being an Apple fanboy since iPhone came out way back in 2007, and since the original 2G model I had since slaved to buy each model every release up to and including the 4S. Upon 5's announcement and press conference, I was underwhelmed, and decided it was time to jump ship, having in my opinion seen Apple beginning its fall from the top. Enter the Galaxy S3.

First thing I did when I finished my routine battery maintenance (this phone was brand new in a sealed box, and the guy traded me for my almost year old 4S.. what a steal!) was try to remember what my username/password was to XDA to see what cool stuff I could do - having an ancient HTC Touch I knew of the community and how awesome it was. My first, and possibly most difficult step was understanding terminology and what advantages of "Rooting" was. After a few weeks of reading and one exchange to Rogers after I bricked my phone (high five for pretending to be an idiot!), I finally felt comfortable with using Odin and the tools. I had no idea what this "Recovery" was, or what CWM was at the time, so a few stupid questions later I figured out how powerful (read: dangerous to idiots like myself) the recovery system was. After a few accidental wipes and another near-brick incident, I grew confident in using CWM Recovery. Time to start flashing ROMs and having fun!

A lengthy stint with a few of the Android ROMs, notably Intergalatic, BlackJelly, while both awesome ROMs, I eventually found that it was a lot of fluff and stuff I didn't need in a phone. Nothing against the ROM developers, they made/make an excellent product, but for me, I wanted something simple, basic.. hey look! over there! It's TASK650! Wow, what a smooth and stable ROM. While it was a rude awakening entering his threads and seeing such a significant amount of hate towards newbs asking questions already answered 10 times over, and receiving hate messages from members who wont be named for myself asking similar questions, I eventually grew to understand and enjoy the ROM for the majority of the time I've had the device.

A few times I dabbled in Paranoid variations, KANG and non-KANG, and even tested out a few of the other Original ASOP ROM's, but significant bugs unrelated to the development teams themselves had me growing more and more frustrated with the device to the point where I was contemplating switching devices all together, or returning to stock.

Well, this morning, March 26th 2013, I decided to go back. After about 3 hours of work, and over-confidence in my abilities to flash back to stock causing a few repeated steps, I managed to get back to stock, rooted, and debloated. I couldn't be happier at the time being. The device does what I want, the battery life is so far pretty damn good, almost on par with ktoonsez's Kernel settings (but still less).

What was the point of this post?

I'm not entirely sure to be honest. I wanted the community to know the story of a former Apple Fanboy. I also wanted everyone new here know that there are a significant amount of over-talented developers here doing awesome work aimed at their own niche group of people. I believe I personally gave every developer and ROM group a fair shot, and I wanted to thank each and everyone mentioned above and any other members who assisted me in my noobish misadventures. I also wanted to get the non-developers in this wonderful community to understand that it's OK being stock, but it's also OK to flash whatever ROM you want, ask your questions, read your FAQs and use Search - it's there for a reason.