Including certain user info in external page

[Gellpak]

I'm trying to do the whole "welcome back, USERNAME" ! Thing on an external page (a wordpress template, if that makes a difference) and I can't figure out a good way to get that information. I'd rather not just trust to what their cookies say.

I need to get these things:

• user id
• display their avatar
• their user "rank" so I can put links to mod/admin areas for those that deserve them

anyone have any ideas? Including global.php is giving me errors, there must be a better way.