S. Potter's profile answers

Being able to make a change in an adaptable organization whether working in a large or small firm.

Being taken to Magic Mountain with my spouse on all the rides. It was a very informal interview.

In a word, restless. I like to tackle new problems once current problems have been solved. It makes me uneasy when there are no new problems to be solved or new things to learn.

1. Phil Harvey, founder of Adam and Eve. http://www.economist.com/people/displayStory.cf...
2. Ernest Bottomley, Artist and my Art Teacher in High School (deceased July 2006). He taught all of his students that you must do whatever it is you love most, not necessarily what you do best....

Working smarter and continuously optimizing my behavior and work patterns.

I also find that working in "optimizing" (or Kaizen) work environments delivers the best software to end-users, which is the primary objective of my job after all, so this is a great side effect.

Currently I am utilizing Behavior Driven Development (or BDD aka TDD) agile development practices for my Ruby and Ruby on Rails work....

My father, who taught me that working smart is better than only working hard!

Most of the time I lived a 5 minute walk from work in SOMA (San Francisco) and most of that walking time was spent inside my apartment building (Rincon Center).

It depended on the client at the time. Most of the time clients were in the hedge fund or investment banking sector, which demanded a lot of energy and time spent at the office, so if I did drink coffee, it would require a lot of coffee!:)

Since most consultants at Finsignia work from their home offices when they are not visiting a client, we can wear whatever we want. When I visit Finsignia's office though I don't feel the need to dress up, since many engineers come in flip flops, jeans, shorts, t-shirts and similar attire, except when clients visit us at the office in which case we wear business casual....

It really varies. I sometimes work with clients on-site, but only about 20% of the time. So traveling to clients can be as easy as a 20 minutes bike ride or as long as a 4 hour flight. However, when we don't need to be at a client's site we are usually allowed to work from our home offices if we have one setup....