Rainy, I mean Ray Knee, aka Ginger Davenport, is employee #3 – right? With this photo, you might start thinking I’m hiring people with issues. Well, you’d be wrong; they were simply all former baristas. Now, I’m not an expert on barista culture, and for all I know, they do all have issues, but that’s not relevant to this hire. Coming in on the lucky day of Friday the 13th, Raynee walked away from Starbucks and joined the ranks of artists at Timefire.

So, what’s the obsession with hiring baristas? Good question and one I don’t really have an adequate answer for. Maybe it was my sympathy for watching them steam their souls out of existence in an effort to make another damned venti-iced-cappuccino with eight packets of sugar and light whip during half-price happy hour while John Legend sucking the remaining life out of their limp bodies – well, that’s how I remember seeing Reignee day-in and day-out.

Ginger wasn’t just some barista mind you, this woman came out of a hippy-drenched sci-fi clad jewelry making Euro-exploration that had her on a trajectory that was colliding with 3DS Max, Photoshop, Gimp, a dabble into HTML and an interest unrivaled with 3D Printing, and how it could change her analog crafting skills into a 3D mastery of Digi-craft.

After witnessing the barista redacted, making the transition to Blender God, Radium decided that she would become a Blender Goddess, and so she embarked on a quest to put her “Espresso pulling hand” into retirement so she could better strengthen her mouse grip instead. She toiled and contorted herself between the endless hours of coffee servitude to master this 3D beast that might one day offer her salvation. It would take weeks, even months, before she would be able to show me enough progress that I would start to consider Rainier for a position with us.

Today, Raindeer is fitting right in with this motley crew, and with enough time, she just might be okay. By the way, her cat’s name is Slutty Pants – right?