About Lanie
Hi, I’m Lanie. I’m so glad you’ve found my page.
Engineering is the application of math to our physical and virtual environment. I’m fundamentally interested in systems that impact people and our world. I’m a self-taught Distributed Systems Engineer with a degree in Structural Engineering.
I started school as an architecture major. It was a childhood passion. I looked at the industry around me and realized that it doesn’t support architects in the same way it did in the 1950s, so I switched to engineering. This worked for me because it allowed me to use numbers to prove my designs, rather than rely on the more nebulous artistic grading of architecture. Now deeper in my software career, these two ways of what defines success in the world overlap more than I expected.
After graduating with my undergraduate degree, I had been waiting for a grad school program to get back to me and started teaching myself JavaScript. It was the first time in my life I had enough time to learn whatever I wanted, and the rest is history.
I like going for long runs, hikes with my dog, and throwing clay on the pottery wheel.
Her name is Stella. She’s very fluffy.
She is 10 this year.
I adopted her from Ruff Start Rescue in Minnesota when she was 3.
She’s a German Shepherd Spitz Mix.
Running is the lowest-friction entry into movement. You need no equipment beyond a pair of shoes, and no schedule except the next thing on your calendar. It helps me drop back into my body.
I’ve run Honolulu, Seattle, and Berlin @ 3:15.
A marathon pushes the human body to its absolute limit. I love finding that the ceiling was false in every area of my life.
I treat it as a meditative practice, where I don’t have to focus on the outcome. I tend to get intense about it anyway!
Thinking in Systems by Donella Meadows.
It’s inspired by HER Interactive’s Nancy Drew computer game series.
San Francisco, but I grew up in Minnesota.
Check out my blog for more.
Of course. I’ve collected doors from my travels.
You can find me on Twitter as @afterlanie, or email me at lanie.b.hei@gmail.com.