Rhett Aultman Engineer, athlete, and mystic atheist

About the Author

Hi. My name is James Rhett Aultman. Most people call me Rhett. I keep my first name around not to be pretentious. When you live your life under your middle name, but all your records stay under your legal first name, things get tricky. But, I digress.

I graduated in 2001 from the University of Florida with a degree in business administration and computer science. After a short career in enterprise software development, I decided to return to the university to help pursue my childhood dream of developing operating systems. While in graduate school, I was a TA for the undergraduate operating systems class from 2003 until my departure from UF's campus in 2006. During some introductory research pursuing a PhD, I applied for my Masters in computer engineering, which was awarded to me in 2008. I have since withdrawn from the PhD program due to economic constraints related to the Great Recession.

I am currently employed with Hewlett Packard in an emerging products group. That's a fancy way of saying that I work on projects I can't blog about. Let's just say that I work to help design computers with very small form factors.

From 2006 until early 2009, I worked for Motorola developing operating system components for their upper-tier enterprise smartphones. My first completed phone was the Motorola Q9h. I am continuing to develop our Windows Mobile product portfolio. My first filed patent was for software on the Motorola Q9h, but that's all I can say about that.

It's through Motorola that I learned more about hardware-software interface and I've since developed a serious interest in microprocessors and microcontrollers. Through Make magazine, I have also rekindled my love of DIY projects. I've seen this as a real opportunity to add skills I didn't learn in school, such as the major microcontroller architectures, electronics, digital design, and hardware prototyping.

I am the universal dilettante when it comes to technology. "Dilettante" is an interesting word in the sense that it's picked up certain connotations over time. In modern parlance, a dilettante is someone who has a fleeting interest and/or superficial experience in a number of different fields. The word, however, is from an Italian root which means "to delight", and that describes me much better. I delight in a broad number of topics, and while my experience in some of them is fleeting, it is only a function of limited time and resources. In some ways, the negative connotation of "dilettante" can be compared to that of "amateur". An amateur is not necessarily less skilled; s/he simply engages in an activity for pleasure and not necessarily for material gain. Don't get me wrong...I am a professional software engineer, but I also do a lot of projects just because.

As for the rest of my life...I'm an incredibly avid cyclist, putting in several miles every day on my daily commute. I pretty easily bike centuries (100 mile rides), usually without support. I also run, and I currently find 10k is my favorite distance. I have, in another life, played soccer and lacrosse, but after I tore my ACL playing lacrosse, I've mostly given up field sports. I sometimes play squash or fence. Any real team sport doesn't fit my schedule very well, though. I love being an athlete and having this level of command over my body.

I identify as an atheist but I belong to an occult order. Explaining this cannot be done in a succinct fashion.