[General Topics] Woody:
What a tough thread. How can you put so much influence into a single post? Maybe I should just take the next 3 posts and put Reserved in them for later use. :p

It is really hard to say who is/was my biggest influence on the site, as I have interacted with so many people over the past 4.5 years. I would have to say that I have a freakish memory and if I have ever talked or interacted with you and you have not changed your UserName, I will remember who you are and most of the time what we talked about. This is what makes it so hard to pinpoint anyone person or even people. I'm not a Developer, Themer or even a hacker that some of the above and I am sure below posters are. I can hold my own in all of those realms, but anyone of you can code circles around me. What I do consider myself is that I am a person who is cut from the same cloth as most of the Users on this site. With that being said, I do have a soft spot for the Users on this site. We have all been in Panic Mode when we got into a bootloop and didn't know how to get out. Or flashed some Mod and forgot to Nand beforehand. There is no denying it, that sucks.

When I first came to XDA, I was looking for a simple function called Root. Back then, when you searched for Root, most of the things that came up in le Goog's page were relevant to Jailbreaks and iOS. Android was a baby and I was tasting the sweet flavor of Éclair at the time. This was before Froyo and the Apps2SD, so we had 128mb of /system and 128mb of /data which filled up really, really fast. I needed to be able to install some more apps at the time (that were mostly junk apps, but I didn't know any better then) and the phone just couldn't hold it. I still remember the beads of sweat as the pooled up on my neck when I ran my first -sh command. It almost worked, but failed and I had to restore back to a stock.sbf (it was a Motorola XT720). You live and you learn, I guess. Looking around, trying to figure out how to do all this I came across the OT section (specifically the Off-Topic: Image Thread). :eek: This was where I first came in contact with a few Mods and some really cool Users. To this day, I still interact with many of them and look to some of them as true friends.

That phone borked and I got a SGS1/Vibrant and started to learn the Samsung eco-system. I met a group of Devs and testers in there and started contributing where I could. This went on for about a year, which is like an eon in internet time. There was a kerfuffle where AOKP had left the site and moved to Rootz and many of those guys who came to be my friends, left XDA. I stayed and blended my posts between both sites. Some of them came back and some didn't, but I am still in contact with many of them daily, even so much as a few minutes ago. We have seen births, deaths, marriages starting and ending, good times and bad, but we always know where we met and keep that as a foundation of our friendships.

I've met several people from the site IRL, talked to some on the phone, sent devices/products to their home addresses and have even had to Infract one. This bodes to what I do on this site and I take it very seriously. Many Users and FSMs alike know that I am brutally honest and I always will be. When I am wrong, I admit it. When I am right, I don't pound it in your face. This isn't something that I generally state in public on-site, so if you have every interacted with me, then you'd know that I speak the truth. It isn't because I have some power trip, it's because that was the way I was raised and the way I raise my own kids.

Honesty and Integrity first. As long as you have those, your word is your oath.

With that being said, I don't work in Android or tech, but I have applied many of the attributes that I have gained on-site into my everyday dealings with personnel and management. I employ the same honesty on-site that I do off-site and if anything, that is what XDA's biggest influence is for me. I only hope that the way that I interact with Devs and Users on-site will transfer to the ways that they help/post/work/...with others.

Who was your biggest influence

Every person that I interact with or even simply read their posts.

What are you doing now, since XDA has opened your eyes to new opportunities

Living the dream

When did you decide, "it's time to make a go of this"

Join Date: 17th November 2010

Where do you feel this can take you

To the moon, Alice. To the moon.