[burnished]

Passion refers to a level of intensity, desire, or obsession. It frequently is used to talk about romantic love but can refer to other things. You were probably right to use the word 'interested' over 'passionate', but if there is a some one who is staying up late working on and thinking about continuous integration then they could say they were passionate about it. There has probably been at least a couple dry technical topics that made you feel passionate in the same way some one could be passionate about CI. I wouldn't call being passionate about something to be typical though so its a pretty weird question to ask a circle of people.