The people who use our boards.

Who are you, and what do you do? What do you like to do outside of work?

My name is Katie Janzen, and I work as a senior software engineer at Amplify Education. We make curricula and learning materials for students and reporting & analysis tooling for teachers.

I work on a product called the Response Interpretation Engine (RIE), which is intended to help teachers by surfacing different ways of thinking that can be derived from how students tend to answer specific questions. It's a really awesome product to get to work on, and my teammates are absolutely amazing. I feel so lucky to be able to work with such outstanding engineers but also incredibly kind and thoughtful human beings.

Outside of work I really like to play basketball with some other ladies on Sunday afternoons. I'm not normally a big sports person, but that's been a lot of fun for me. I've also finally been bitten by the weight-lifting bug thanks to Casey Johnston's outstanding LIFTOFF: Couch to Barbell program (shoutout to No Boilerplate for the recommendation).

I also love to do a lot of more esoteric computing projects in my free time. I recently wrote a little clipboard utility for the command line in Rust called KClip, which I'm really happy with.

What hardware do you use?

My current personal machine is a Space Gray 16-inch MacBook Pro M1 Pro, which I got in 2022 and continue to be really happy with. I ADORE my Logitech MX Master 3S, the last one before they ruined the clicks with the 3S and 4—give me back my clicks, you bastards!!

I finally built my first gaming PC after years and years of putting it off! 🥳 That's been a lot of fun.

The importance of my bullet journal (a bright red hardcover LEUCHTURM1917 A5 Notebook cannot be overstated. I even kludged a pen loop onto it with red Duck Tape. The Bullet Journal Method has been a real lifeline as my work has gotten more complex and my ADHD more challenging to manage.

And what software?

Thanks to hours a day writing code, #1 with a bullet is Neovim. I've been using it for about two or three years now and I'm starting to really dial in a setup that I love and feel productive with.

Lately I've been trying to write a lot more, so that's slowly starting to appear on my website 347online.me. As a result I've recently been getting back into Obsidian for writing and knowledge management. Previously I was trying to build more of a custom solution with just Neovim plugins, but it's looking like Obsidian with Vim motions enabled may be the better compromise for me and my needs.

Between the personal wiki and the bullet journal, I finally feel in control of my life for essentially the first time, which is wonderful.

What’s your keyboard setup like? Do you use a custom layout or custom keycaps?

I’ve tried alternate layouts on the laptop keyboards, but it’s a huge pain, so I’m still using QWERTY there. On my previous custom boards and my Moonlander, though, I use Colemak-DH. All my keyboards run QMK, so I configure them all in the raw C code. I know you can use GUI remappers, but I really enjoy feeling in complete control down to the metal. It’s really cool how powerful and flexible QMK is, I love it.

What would be your dream setup?

I think my ideal setup for work would be built around a 27-inch 5K monitor. My current monitor is 24-inch 4K, and I really do feel like I could still use a little more space. It also doesn't have an adjustable stand; I just have it on a riser, which definitely feels clunky. I think I wouldn't mind having a wider desk surface. I do sometimes feel a bit cramped in the desk space I have currently. It’s barely wider than most desk mats, so there’s not really room to have one of those and still have other stuff on there—and that would be cool, I think. I also have just an absolutely atrocious chair, it is SO bad, a really nice chair would be a huge upgrade.

Honestly though, I do so much of my work from restaurants, libraries, and coffee shops that I really can't complain about my home setup too much. I really like the flexibility of being more nomadic, so the 16-inch screen on the laptop is a real winner there.