Paul Solt

It’s week 10 at RIT; only one more week of class and then finals! I’m excited because once I finish up here I’ll be heading home and then out to California to work for Apple!

I had decided to run for Student Government President 2008-2009 and I’m officially beginning my campaign. I’m right now looking for ideas and suggestions and will be making future posts with more information.

My life has changed thanks to Joe.

Suddenly my tab key is more useful on my Macbook. I can now tab through my dialog option buttons. There’s an obscure setting in the System Preferences > Keyboard and Mouse > Keyboard Shortcuts > Full Keyboard Access (set to All Controls). Or you can press ctrl-F7.

This makes so many things much easier to do with out having to constantly use the mouse to move to a button and click.

Love it!

What would you do if you had a goal that you could almost reach, but not quite. It’s something that sits in front of you like a carrot on a stick. What steps would you take to reach it and how committed are you till the end?

This one goal has been a dream of mine, but I haven’t achieved it; I’m just not strong enough. Since my freshmen year of college I’ve worked at it, yet never succeeded.

Now you might be wondering what that goal is, and I’ll tell you. There are some things that I have a passion for in life, and it’s goals like this one that really drive me. I can’t explain it entirely, but I set my sights on it and I really give it my all. It’s this same mentality that I want to carry into other areas in my life. And I do, but it’s something I need to actively work at.

Brilliant people inspire me to set goals and to reach them. Recently I’ve adopted Steve Wozniak as my first hero. I really didn’t know anything about him at the beginning of the quarter beyond being involved with Apple. I’ve never really had a hero or anyone that I really looked up to in life. After seeing him talk and reading his book, iWoz, I’m compelled to push myself. It’s just amazing to get inside his head to see what he was thinking. He had the drive and the skills to go places. I want to be like him, while still being Paul Solt.

RIT’s a challenging place and I’ve learned a lot. I’ve learned about leadership, time management, fitness, and communication. I’ve had amazing opportunities and I’ve had the chance to meet some very intelligent people. What I do with these skills and the connections will take me places; maybe some day I’ll be able to inspire others like Steve Wozniak has done for me. It’s important to give back to others, that’s why I do a lot of what I do. I help people program computers, lift weights, fix things, cook, and the list goes on. It just comes natural. I have talent and I try to share it with the people I care about.

My problem is that it’s sometimes hard to see where I’m going when I’m so busy at RIT. It really takes the end of the quarter to give me a shock and actually think about something bigger than projects and tests. Why am I doing what I’m doing? The reason is simple. I do it because I enjoy it. By becoming a better person and by striving for excellence I leave a path behind me. I’m not sure how pronounced that path is, but I know it has effected some people along the way. By making a difference in other peoples lives I reach goals that I didn’t know I had.

When it comes down to the wire, whether it’s academics or just a goal. I know I’ll reach it and that’s why I push myself. To do the impossible and to succeed makes the impossible possible. There wouldn’t have been a Mission Impossible II if Ethan Hunt had failed. While I’m not ready for everything that’s thrown at me, I’m ready to get ready. To push my limits and overcome barriers.

My goal is simple, yet so hard. 100 push-ups in 2 minutes. You might ask yourself “that’s it?” And to that I’d reply “yes.” It’s been 4 years and I still haven’t been able to do it. It’s a commitment that many people aren’t willing to make. It takes time, it takes discipline, and most importantly it takes motivation.

This brings back a memory from freshmen year when I was considering the Marines. After PT on a Saturday morning, the Sergeant talked to me in his office. He brought out cards with words on them like “Money”, “Education”, “Leadership”, “Fitness”, “Honor”, “Courage”, “Commitment”, and many others. He asked me to pick out a few words and to tell him why they were important to me and how they would affect me in the Marines. At the time I wasn’t quite sure, so I picked out a few and talked about them. I feel like I had to lie about my reasons. There was a drive I had that couldn’t be expressed with these keywords and I felt like I didn’t fit in. He told me that the Marines would allow me to accomplish those keywords, yet I’ve done that and more at RIT.

Maybe it’s deeper than just reaching a goal, because once you get to the goal it’s over. I might reach the goal this month, or I might reach it next year. I’m driving to reach it and it’s the drive that is what I’m looking for. Picking a goal sets the mentality and it’s something I need to do more often. It’s a physical drive, but it’s also a mental drive. I’m at 80 right now and it’s a new quarter. I’m ready to learn new things and to do things that I’ve never done before.

So it might surprise you that I enjoy going to the gym to lift weights. It’s a little “hobby” of mine ever since playing JV Lacrosse in high school. I’m not sure what clicked, but ever since lacrosse I’ve never been the same with my physical fitness. I really enjoyed pushing myself to the limit.

Now I don’t consider myself a complete expert, but I really hate it when I see people doing things with weights that they shouldn’t be doing. So many times I see people using more weight than they can handle and it just bothers me. I want to tell them they’re doing it wrong, but there’s just so many people and I don’t want to rub them the wrong way.

1. I didn’t start with the biggest weights, I worked my way up to them. It’s the same for anybody; you take baby steps towards the heavier weights. Arnold didn’t get big right away, it took a lot of hard work. I think that’s the fact that many people fail to understand. Many people think that doing a lot of weight will make them get bigger or stronger, but they fail to do the exercise properly. It’s not easy to get big and it does take time, but if you’re dedicated and you do it right you will see results. I promise.

2. Get someone to go with you who has a clue at what they’re doing. It’s important to have good form on a lot of free weight exercises or you can pull a muscle or tear something that’s not meant to be torn. I see so many people throwing their bodies around to get that last rep with weight that even I’m not comfortable lifting with good form. Slow and smooth movements are will give you better results and your at a lower risk of hurting yourself.

3. It’s a common misconception that you need to feel sore after a workout for it to be good. You don’t have to tear every fiber in your muscles to increase strength or endurance. So don’t kill yourself out there with boat loads of weight. As you continue to exercise it’s normal to not feel the soreness as much as when you first started.

4. Stay away from the protein and dietary supplements. They’re not worth the risks and they really don’t have benefits. I’ve done quite a bit of research in this area and my mother is a nutritionist. Stick to a healthy diet that follows the food pyramid and you’ll have more than enough protein in your body. My Pyramid You only need 0.8 grams of protein per pound if you’re a normal person, or up to 1.2 grams per pound if you’re very athletic. So that’s a range of 50-120 grams if your a male at 155 pounds. Your body doesn’t process more than that. And just because something says it’s herbal or natural doesn’t mean it’s good for you. Since when does being natural equate to being good? Poison from a spider is natural, yet it will kill you if you decide to take it as a dietary supplement.

5. Don’t go exercising every day, your body needs rest. Make sure you take time to let your body recover between work outs. You’re not going to get bigger if you keep tearing all the muscle in your body every day of the week. So take at least 2 days off a week at a minimum.

6. There is no such thing as spot fat reduction. You can do all the ab workouts in the world, but that’s not going to give you the abs you want if you have some fat on your stomach. You need to do cardio exercise to reduce your bodies fat if you want to see anything.

7. Try push ups. They’re one of the best exercises that only require about 6 feet of floor space and they’re easy to do.

8. If you start something stick with it, you’ll feel a lot better about yourself. Trust me, I do!

Hopefully that’ll send you in the right direction. Everyone needs to be active; even the computer programmers.

Cell phones continue to disappoint me. I’ve had my Verizon Wireless cell phone for the past two years. It’s been alright and I was excited to upgrade to something smaller, slimmer, and faster, yet I found myself wanting more. Why do I get so little out of the phone and the phone service?

A few weeks ago I received my new phone the KRZR after doing a bit of research and reading some positive reviews. It looked nice and it was much slimmer than my Motorola E815, but it lacked so many of the features that I had expected. Maybe my term features isn’t the best way to describe it. My biggest disappointment is the user interface and the way I interact with the phone; I consider the interface to be the single most important feature to any phone.

However, no phone has on the box: easy to use or great interface, because it’s not something they use to sell the phone. Instead what’s used to sell the phone are technology sound bits like “blue-tooth”, “1.3 Mega pixel Camera”, etc. I’m not sure where the problem lies, but I’m starting to think that it’s Verizon which is ruining my phone experience. The new interface that they’ve developed for the KRZR and just about every other new Verizon phone I’ve seen is terrible. I feel like I’ve taken 10 steps backwards from my old phone. I’m going to list my complaints and discuss them below:

1. All I see is red. Why do I have to look at the red bars on the top and bottom of every screen? I should be able to remove them or to change them, yet I can’t find any such option. These bars help create an ugly interface.

2. “Ok”. So that’s about the only option I get on almost every menu screen. What happened to “Back”, “Cancel”, “Yes”, “No”, or “Menu”? “Ok” doesn’t answer every question that I have when I’m using the phones numerous options, many options are just assumed to be known to the user which is a terrible design. You literally have to play guess and check to see what a button does. I even went as far as reading some of the manual to find options, but I found that these were not discussed (Yes I do read manuals).

3. There is no ability to silence the phone when the flip cover is closed. The side buttons that Motorola provides are completely useless. Woah. I’m sorry but the lack of such a feature is a huge hit to the phone. I’m on the go all the time between different meetings, classes, and presentations. I need a phone that allows me to quickly change the sound options. And what happen to my option to vibrate and then ring?

4. Themes aren’t themes, they’re color gradients in the menus. I was able to change the way the buttons and menus looked on my old phone, but the new phone provided no such option. Hire a graphic designer to create a set of buttons and menus to make a phone visually pleasing.

5. Backup Assistant? While the concept is a great idea, it really misses the mark. I have all my contacts in groups on my old phone and when I went to move them over everyone landed in one huge group. That’s not very helpful and now I have to go back in and regroup everyone. I have over 217 contacts, that’s not something that can be done in 30 seconds. When I went back to my old phone (Switched the ESM associated with my Verizon account) Backup Assistant can’t sync up anymore. Apparently it wasn’t robust enough to handle situations in which a user switches to a new phone, adds a contact, switches back to a previous phone, adds more contacts, and then tries to backup the contact list. I now get an error that prevents me from doing anything useful (like backing up my contacts).

I’m turned off from purchasing a new phone from Verizon almost completely. I signed up for a 2 year agreement and paid $50 for the KRZR and it’s not worth either of those payments. I’ve switched back to my old phone and I’m sending the new phone back and switching back to my old contract. I have no incentive to stay with Verizon beyond the “IN minutes” which helps when I’m calling family or friends with Verizon phones. Instead I’d like to look at future options. The iPhone is probably the only phone on the market that has my attention. I found a good discussion from Bruce Tognazzini at iPhone Interface

Beyond that I’m looking into what Google is beginning to offer, which warrants it’s own discussion. Google has just released the Andriod Mobile Phone Operating System SDK It’s a software development kit for programmers to develop their own applications for smart phones. With Google’s help and it’s current bid for the 700MHz spectrum I think we’ll begin to see phones that are actually worth the money and the features that they advertise. The promise for the system is it’s openness in allowing anyone to customize the different parts of the interface or applications. You could rewrite the way in which the phone makes a call if you didn’t feel like Google did a good job.

Hopefully some day I can own a phone that I’m actually proud of using.

Each week’s gone by so fast. I’ve done a lot this quarter, but I’d wish it’d slow down. Hopefully I’ll have more time to write some blogs once this quarter ends. Right now I simply don’t have time. I’m playing catchup with classes, work, extracurriculars, and job applications for a summer coop.

Currently I’m looking into Apple, NVIDIA, Vicarious Visions, Microsoft, and Google.

We’ll see how things go.

Orientation was a blast. I had the best and loudest group V-19! It was great to meet everyone and I look forward to hanging out into the future.

RIT’s keeping it real with classes starting on Labor day. I honestly forget holidays when I’m at school because we just don’t celebrate them with days off. My classes are looking good and I know a lot of people in them, so it’s good to see some friendly faces.

I’m back at RIT two weeks before classes start doing orientation training and then orientation week for incoming freshmen. It’s going to be busy, but so far it’s been a lot of fun and I’ve met a lot of new people.

This year should be nice and busy between working, classes, frisbee, and other activities. That’s how RIT always is, never a dull moment.

Hey it’s summer time! I’ve been busy with work and I haven’t had much time to work on my personal projects yet. So everything’s been on hold.

I’ve started going to the gym regularly, playing ultimate, and some Krav Maga (Israeli Self-Defense).

Check out my RIT website at http://www.rit.edu/~pds2352 I should have some new updates in the next few weeks.