I have yet to see anyone on these boards match my knowledge of Gor (primarily the book series, although I know a bit about the lifestyle too) - but OTOH I have yet to see many people show much interest, so perhaps it’s a bit niche. 
<-------------- Sitting at desk, weeping. I went to High School. I can write a good paper. I like to think I’m an articulate person.
I don’t understand a damned thing you wrote.
Oh god. The language has moved on and left me behind.
Unfortunately it seems that my greatest skill is a “skill” rather than a topic. But I may be the best programmer on the board (failing anyone to toss down and challenge that.) Several others are more knowledgeable about encryption, calculus, linear algebra, big O notation, data structures, computer history, hardware, protocols, etc. But when it comes to being told what an application needs to do, I can design the whole thing in my head based on the time schedule to make it, how long the code is going to need to run for, whether other programmers are ever going to need to look at it, etc. and then entirely changing my programming style to work to make it perfect to what will be needed over the life of the program. So this might involve things like, how much I use intricate, elegant solutions over simple, readily understood ones, how much redundancy there is, how split and encapsulated the various bits of the app are, how much documentation I will need to leave behind, what languages I use, etc. And within five minutes from having heard what it was I am to make to being able to list off a big ass list of everything that I’m going to need in terms of development environment, what you’re going to want to deploy on, what the major milestones are and how long it will be to each. And since I’ve already got all the code done in my head, writing it down takes very little time comparitive to other programmers, and almost never any bugs.
My brother seems to be like this for cooking as he described it. Managing a kitchen he would look at orders as they came in, sort them in his head, figure out the scheduling for how long it would take any item to be made, vs. when it needed to be served, and such, then when it was time shout off, by station, what they needed to queue up then–while tending his own station and watching everything headed out the door to make sure it passed muster. He may also know more about the chemistry behind food than any Doper, but I would need to get him in for a showdown. His description of making consomme would have done Dr. Frankenstein proud.
Japanese business. I’ll put my 16 years in business experience here against anyone I’ve run accross. I’ve got as good a gut feeling for what’s needed as anyone I’ve run accross, native or foreign, and have had a good track record with sales numbers to back it up.
Fifth had five XR spells, the three D’s, the E and F.(my cataloging system is quite thorough, why do you ask?)
The three D’s were Dwarven Catapult, Disintegrate, and Detonate. The E was Earthquake, and the F was Fireball. Visions only had one XR spell, Rock Slide. If you were lucky you got Earthquake, Fireball, Rock Slide, and Dwarven Catapult. Detonate would have been less good, but there were some nasty artifacts running around(Snake Basket anyone?) that I would have liked to have a Detonate for, so I’d have been happy with either. If the deck was really degenerate I’m thinking you had the Earthquake along with the two Djinns.
Enjoy,
Steven
That’s funny, I had drinks at his house when he hosted a meeting of the los Angeles Sherlock Holmes society and while drooling over his weapons occurred, I was mostly drooling over his collection of wax cylinder recordings he was playing for us.
James’ house is what my house would be like if I had, you know, money. And connections. And taste. The man has more junque than you can imagine, all of it interesting!
If you mean MENTAL cataloging, I’m extraordinarily impressed. I quite certainly could not have come up with that off the top of my head.
Anyhow, yes, I had Fireball, Dwarven Catapault, Rock Slide, Earthquake, to go along with the two waterspouts. I also had crypt rats, terror, and a bunch of other good spells. That deck was nutsoid.
Did he show you his fully functional WW2 half-track?
The cataloging system above begins to resemble the one below. The number of times I’ve leafed through my folders, either putting stuff away or getting stuff out, it makes an impression. I had a dry spell during Planeshift - Scourge, so trivia from that era is going to trip me up(I’m backfilling my collection a bit at a time, thank heaven for crap rare boxes), but stuff before and after that era I’m pretty solid on.
Enjoy,
Steven
The one in the backyard? There was something back there, but I spent most of the meeting time just in awe of the stuff there was in the house. It was like Forrey Ackerman’s place, only with weapons and Victoriana instead of SF magazines and props.
While we are in the august presence of The Perfect Master, I think even he might defer to Hal Briston’s knowledge of sheep.
Maybe we should start a separate thread for our discussion.
Amen to that! I was only at Forrey’s place once, pity it’s mostly gone now. Dang, we’ve probubly met sometime.
Hey now, just because I like roguelikes doesn’t mean I’m any good at them. I’ve been banging away at Nethack for about five years now and have yet to even come close to ascending. Crawl, three years and I have no idea what I’m doing most of the time. Angband and its variants I gave up on after discovering explosive breeding, so can’t help you there 
Just remember the usual stuff, think before you act, always have healing/uncursing on hand and BE PATIENT. Oh, and spoilers help a lot if you’re not opposed to them in principle. You gotta remember Angband and other roguelikes aren’t like commercial games that WANT you to win. These guys don’t really care. Depending on the flavour, they could well be actively trying to kill you. Hell, the leading of the Slash 'em devteam has never ascended himself. Hang in there 
Heh…me too. I know a little about everything, and a lot about nothin’.
In rogue I once ascended fairly in a great many tries. hack was just an amusing way of wandering around until I dropped dead of something or other. I once stuffed myself to death on fortune cookies… never played the variants above though.