In this next blog post in our interview series, we would like to introduce you to our own Sean Martinez.
Meet Sean, a man of many passions. He has ridden his bike in the rain and communed with wolves. He is one of our .NET programmers.
Name, Company, Title, City
Sean Martinez, Infinity Interactive, Programmer, Salem, Oregon
When did you first work with Infinity?
October 1st, 2015
What are six words you think of when you think of Infinity?
Dynamic, accessible, knowledgeable, passionate, multipotential, inquisitive
What would you be doing if you weren’t in your current job?
I would leverage my computer science skills towards one of my other passions: sports or health.
My passion for sports started young with watching basketball and football with my family, but I enjoy most athletic competitions. My favorite football team is the Denver Broncos because my mom went to Granada High School and watched John Elway play there before his career in Denver, starting a family tradition. I also enjoy the local football/basketball teams: The Oregon Ducks, the Oregon State Beavers, and the Portland Trailblazers. Personally, I played basketball until high school and then moved into wrestling. I still play pickup basketball games and have helped coach a few youth teams. I could see myself diving into the analytics and building software to better assess athletic performance, outcomes, injury prevention, or other useful things.
When I think of health, I think of the physical and mental well being of a person and, like most people, my health and the health of both my friends and family are incredibly important to me. I've seen in my own family, a vast array of difficulties and complications to our lives in the pursuit of staying healthy and living a long, meaningful life. I've never had any aspirations of being a doctor but I've always felt that I could contribute to this huge field in some way: making health plans more easily understood and transparent, devising better strategies for preventative care, or maybe just finding ways to make being healthy more enjoyable through software. There's so much work being done and yet every one of us have people that we care about being burdened by their health.
What was your favorite food when you were a child and what is it now?
Like a lot of kids, I was a huge fan of pizza. Lately, I've been on a chicken sandwich kick: Seemingly simple but with so many tasty variations; it never gets old.
Who makes the best pizza, and what’s the best chicken sandwich? If you say anything other than chicken parm, I'm going to question your judgement. :)
Well, I have had a ton of great pizza over the years but one that sticks out in my mind is High Five Pizza in San Jose, California. High quality, consistent, and surprisingly fast considering how massive the order line can get. So...chicken parm then? Haha. I would say that whatever the style, it needs three things: seasoned, juicy chicken, a sauce with some kick to it, and vegetables that give it some texture contrast.
If you could be an animal, what would you be and why?
I would be a wolf. Highly intelligent, intuitive, and with a fierce loyalty to its pack. I grew up in the Alaskan tundra, amongst the ice and snow, and I had two half wolves as constant companions: Kusko and Koona. They would keep us warm, they would pull my sister and I on our sleds, and they were fierce protectors of us. Since then, I've always been drawn to art depicting wolves, movies or documentaries covering them, and enjoyed both their wisdom and grace. They're really majestic creatures.
How very Game of Thrones. Are you more Robb Stark or Jon Snow?
I would have to say that I’m more Jon Snow. I’ve always been and felt more for the underdog in my life. The Rocky rather than the Apollo Creed. I take every success and failure that I have to heart and try to turn them into something positive in my life. I hope to live a life of many, many more failures than successes because then I know that I will have stretched my own limits, exceeded my own boundaries, and I will have no regrets.
What is your favorite time of day/week/year?
Definitely winter. It reminds me of some of my years growing up in Alaska, has great holidays, and provides one more excuse to visit my family.
What brought your family to Alaska? Any favorite memories of Alaska?
From around age seven to eleven I lived in Bethel, Alaska. My mom took a job with a small airline called Camai Air. I have a ton of great memories there. My elementary school had a special playground built underneath it for when the weather was bad and we would all go down there to play. My sister and I would build snow mazes fifty yards long and wide at an open field near our house. And we used to drive our van on the Kuskokwim river to get around when it was frozen.
What is your favorite mode of transportation and why?
When I was a kid, I loved to ride my bicycle in the rain. I could go fast and feel refreshed the whole time. It's exhilarating!
In the rain? Really? Do you still bike now?
Yes, in the rain, mostly in northern California where there were a lot of hills I could go down fast. I don’t bicycle much anymore, but I wouldn’t mind picking it back up. People love to ride bikes out here!
What chore do you absolutely hate doing?
I think that mowing or weeding might be one of the only chores that I actually dislike. My allergies may have something to do with that, which is especially problematic in Oregon where it feels like anything grows.
How did you end up in Oregon? And do you really need to cut the grass there? I heard there was no sun and it rains all the time.
I moved to Oregon to start my college education and live closer to some of my friends and family. Surprisingly, the huge amount of rain in Oregon and the hot summers makes it a perfect place to grow grass. Oregon boasts the grass seed capital of the world in Linn county.