Hi, my name is Karl Stöcker, and I was born a long time ago, way too long, in Berchtesgaden, Germany, grew up in Düsseldorf, and since 1966 have been in the US (mostly). I've traveled a lot, 46 countries by this time, and I am planning on many more. I've spent a couple of decades in the US military, active and reserve, and since retirement from civil service, worked off and on as a high school science teacher in a suburb of Sacramento. Ever since my original ID's Doom days, back when it was just released on a floppy disk as a free level advertisement, I was interested in learning about 3D CGI, but I didn't get started until I retired from civil service in 1996. Since then I have been working with Truespace, Bryce, then Lightwave 3D, and Vue. Also dabbled a little in Poser 4, but just bought Poser 6 and am starting sink my teeth into that a bit. My website, http://www.cosmic-pearl.com/, has more details on me, should anyone not be bored to tears by now, also there are LW Viking ship and Star Wars X-Wing tutorials, as well as downloadable meshes (which can be imported into Vue, BTW) - my free stuff to the CG community.