I was a professional software engineer. My career lasted approximately fifteen years. I did real-time embedded pacemaker support-computer software, UNIX tools, PC tools, various forms of documentation, and pill-packaging machine robotics real-time embedded software. My work was regulated by the FDA and required a high degree of documentation, reliability, testing, and quality. Professionally I wrote software primarily in the languages of various assembly, C, C++, EMACS Lisp, UNIX script, and HTML.

My professional career ended in 1999 with the onset of mental illness. However, my condition is treatable by medication, and I am now quite functional. However I cannot readily rejoin the professional community in the bio-medical field due to my diagnosis of mental illness.

I have a Bachelors of Science degree in Electronic Engineering Technology from DeVry Institute of Technology (1985).

I'm trying to get into the professional gaming industry as a contracting "game modder". I model, texture, and use the game editor for the Elder Scrolls series of games... Morrowind and Oblivion.

I am considering doing professional TCL/TK programming, if that is possible, from my home in Hawaii. At least with TCL/TK all the tools are readily available. I would *love* to work on a professional project in TCL/TK.

I've written quite a bit of TCL/TK stuff, but I am largely self-taught. I started programming TCL/TK in 2002. My completed TCL/TK projects: Mechwarrior4 Merc Modeler (an info utility for a commercial game), TESFILES (a tool for doing game modification of Morrowind, a commercial game), TESRESPEC (a different tool also for the above), MWSwitcher (a small utility to aid game modification of Morrowind), Gladiator Board Game (an Internet multi-player and solo play board game), and Piechart Disk (a utility to show disk usage in an interactive pie chart form).

My nickname is MentalElf. Well, there were a couple reasons I chose MentalElf, the first was that I assumed it was OK to be nuts in the gaming industry. Secondly, I believe that the stigma associated with being "mental" is generally inappropriate, and is more of a mistaken confusion of mental illness and mental retardation. Mental illness is treatable through medication, retardation is not. I hope to widen people's horizons... taking a moment to correct anyone I can.

Elder Scrolls III, Morrowind
I started with a quest mod, "Trouble With Millie". This was just CS work, turned out fairly well, however I redid it as one point, improving it, and adding in a creature companion, a pack guar with inventory and teleport ability, Roscoe.

I then did Mannequins, a very tiny script solution to having still characters to place and dress up. It featured some improvements over the other mannequins mods out, as far as keeping the mannequins from speaking or moving, and of course since it was only script, it was a very small download.

I did four companion mods, a pack guar, a set of three borrowed creatures (Raven, Sprite, Cat), Grimlok (a free model I animated), and Tolarn (another free model I animated). For these I was now doing modeling, texturing, and CS work. Due to model problems, the set of three (Raven/Sprite/Cat) were removed and I do not offer them anymore. Tolarn, small dragon companion, is the last of the bunch and features a complete quest to obtain him.

I got involved doing Children of the Night3 with JB and crew, and spent many months doing scripting and CS work for that. It would never be finished and released, sadly.

I did Search for Arcane Guard, which was a set of custom male/female armor with scripted magic, along the lines of "set armor" in Diablo2, where the suit's magic only works if all the pieces are worn. This quest mod with high reward features some innovative scripting, with a number of quest tasks that are not just "bring me the x" or combat. The mod features a unique compass, that when placed on the ground shows the direction to the next goal.

I tried playing some Morrowind mods, was totally happy with White Wolf of the Lokken Mountain, was unhappy with Suran Underground, and notified the author LightninFlik of problems with his HorrorMod.

One thing led to another and I ended up redoing HorrorMod, from start to finish, adding some content and removing other content. In all it took three months to complete the rework.

I wrote many tools, ESSMode for editing scripts, TESFILES for packaging mods, TESRESPEC for renaming files enmass, and MWSWITCHER to select an active copy of Morrowind. Apart from ESSMode, these tools are all in TCL/TK, a "tool control language" from UNIX land.

I own 3DSMAX 6, paid $700 for a student license. I was rather upset that I could not use it for Morrowind. Now I can use it for Oblivion however, and I will probably stick with version six rather than upgrade to nine.