// about me

Hello World! I'm Zane -- a software developer based in Dallas Texas. I'm a UT Dallas Allumni with two years in the HR software industry. I care about writing clean, purposeful code and building things that are actually useful.

Outside of work I'm probably cooking something new, playing through a game, or trying to get good at Chess. This page is for anyone curious about the person behind the resume.

working on
Personal Budgeting AppReact + Java Spring Boot
playing through
Dirt Rally[this game is so hard]
learning
Spanish on Dreaming.com[not an ad]
listening to
most likely: lofi hip-hop beats to relax/study to
Skateboarding
Picked it up in college and got hooked immediately. Kickflips, late shuvs, and rock+rolls are my go-tos.
Skating taught me perseverance in a way nothing else has — you fall, you get up, you try again until it clicks. I love the community around it too. Met a lot of good people just rolling around campus and hitting local parks.
Piano
Self-taught since junior year of high school. I learn mostly by ear and YouTube.
Favorites: Gary's Song, i Giorni, River Flows in You. I have a basic grasp of music theory but mostly I just play what sounds good to me. It's one of the best ways I've found to decompress.
Video Games
Lifelong hobby. Big on both multiplayer and single-player experiences.
Multiplayer: Minecraft Bedwars, It Takes Two, Overcooked. Single-player: Pikmin, Portal 2, Super Mario Galaxy, Shovel Knight, Cuphead, Doom. Speedrunning has been a big part of gaming for me as well, as I've earned respected times in Titanfall 2 and Pikmin 1. Gaming is also part of how I got into programming, as my first programming project was a GameMaker Sudio game back in high-school.
Reading
Memoirs and self-help are my sweet spot. Fiction has to really grab me.
Favorites: Perks of Being a Wallflower, Arc of a Scythe, Atomic Habits, The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck. Reading has done more for my attention span than anything else. I think learning that our brain is much less plastic after 25 has led me to read many of the memoirs and self help books.