[Introductions] MXQ Master:
Actually, this forum is so good that I didn't have the necessity to ever subscribe, as all the questions that I ever had concerning smartphones were already answered here.

But how did I find this place?

Well, it was spring or maybe summer 2015 when a friend visited me from Portugal. He had that brand new and beautiful Galaxy Note 4, Samsung's flagship at that time, and wanted me to install a custom ROM on it. He left the phone with me and said he will pick it up next time he visits me.

I played a few days with the phone and decided then to google for custom Android ROMs. That's how I found this site.

I remember the bright background of the website and foremost the endless list of Custom ROMs, nicely put in categories for each model that ever existed, it was like discovering the internet for the very first time. A new world opened its gates for me.

I downloaded the Cyanogen Mod, the predecessor of LineageOS and started the installation over Odin. Unfortunately, I unplugged the USB too early and bricked my friend's brand new phone!

It took me some time and some drinks to recover from that shock, but after returning to XDA Developers, it took me just some minutes to find the solution to my problem.

Since then, I'm a lurker here and somehow also a thief, as I modded every phone that passed through my fingers with XDA Software/Knowledge, without giving something in return.

I have learned one very important thing here at this place. When you follow a guide, you should follow it 100% otherwise it will end in absolute failure.

I broke the screen of my Huawei Mate 30 Pro recently and found a LIO-L29 replacement screen for $299 on eBay, but I needed a phone instantly, so I bought an Honor 50 instead. I love it, but I missed my Mate, so I bought a new one. It had already the newest EMUI 12 installed, and I wanted to downgrade to 10 for installing GMS.

I followed @badmania98's Huawei P40 thread as it has the same software as the Mate 30, but couldn't get it to work. Until I went back to his post and read the whole f***ing text to find out that I have to use the latest version of HiSuite with EMUI 12. While I was trying it with dload over OTG (USB-C Stick) the entire time.

Now I'm here just for fun and to say thank you for all these years of support.

I have an IT background that goes far back into the last century, starting already as a kid in the late 1970ies, losing my virginity to a Tandy TRS-80, then came the Atari era, the Commodore 64, Intel's 8086, 80-286, 80-386 and so on. Got early some certificates in programming (BASIC, COBOL, Pascal, C# etc.) but got extremely distracted by the opposite sex, so the programming path discontinued for a while:

Went from Europe to New York in the early 80's, mostly for girls and partying, then a few years in LA, actually for studying, but got distracted by the girls again. Afterwards to Asia for about a decade. First year there just partying again, only girls in my head, later became more adult-like and married a Chinese girl there and then returned with her to Europe in 1996 again, where I'm at right now.

When the Internet came into being (the first provider was in April 1996 at my location), I learned HTML, CSS, PHP, Python, C++, Java, JavaScript (later also with all its associations like AJAX, JSON etc.). Networking and especially network security studies also took a good portion of my lifetime. Started intense work with Linux Servers (CentOS or Debian mostly) Apache and MySQL Databases in 2001 until presence. Forced to learn and to manage Microsoft Servers and the entire Azure Infrastructure, forced to learn Google Infrastructure and its endless services, to keep up to date and to finally keep the job.

Got into extreme pc overclocking from 2005 till 2010, still using a first gen Core i7 965 @ 4GHz from 2009 right now. Mounted on an X58 DFI LANParty board with UEFI support for my NVMe Samsung 970 SSDs over Tianocore (UEFI DUET), running on Windows 11.

Well versed on all versions of Windows, MacOS, Linux, iOS, Android. Well versed on CMS WordPress and Joomla (both business related). Like to play around with Xcode, Visual Studio, Android Studio, Eclipse a lot. When time allows me days not just hours, I like to delve into 3D graphics and animation, mostly with Blender or Maya in combination with Photoshop. Other 3D programs that I use in combination are Makehuman, Poser Pro and ZBrush.

Newest serious hobbies are reverse engineering tools like Ghidra and IDA Pro. Newest fun hobbies are 3D engines Unreal Engine, Unity, Epic Games. Further interests are in deepfakes and one thing that I've discovered here: KLWP.

My hobbies in real life are martial arts and body building (without roids now) for the physical body, science, literature and philosophy for the mind, and music, meditation, cooking, some good wine and a good smoke for the soul. I like to watch Movies but more and more the TV series which became better and better by the day.

That's it, you know now everything that is legal to be known.