RMA my RAM (with no mar on my arm)

My laptop started acting wonky. Specifically, it started to spontaneously restart whenever the computer had been running for, say, 40 seconds. That is quite annoying. After doing a little research online, I figured that I had a bad capacitor. After ripping apart my laptop to look around, I realized that a laptop motherboard doesn't have the kind of capacitors discussed as being part of the capacitor plague. After looking around some more, I became convinced that I probably had a bunk RAM stick. If your computer is spontaneously restarting, you might want to suspect a CPU overheating problem or power supply issue or bad driver problem if the restart happens after more than a few minutes, but should suspect bad RAM if the restart can happen very quickly (sometimes during boot) or still happens when your doing something like checking BIOS. As I was investigating the problem on my laptop I had tried to get into the BIOS and the computer froze (didn't restart because that is a Windows response to the bad RAM) and that was the last clue to me that the RAM was at fault.

I had bought a 1GB stick from Newegg.com (which I highly recommend for all computer component shopping) a little over a year ago. I was able to pull up the old invoice on my Gigaram RAM. I went to the Gigaram website and found their RMA (returned merchandise authorization) policy and followed it. After about 3 weeks total, I had my replacement RAM at only the cost of shipping my broken RAM to them. Could have been faster, but having the lifetime warranty honored was a good feeling. The fact that Newegg kept a copy of my invoice avaialable to me and that Gigaram honored the warranty made this a fairly painless experience. Thanks Gigaram and Newegg.

More than fair

Saw this in an AP story about Lance Briggs pleading guilty to something:

Defense attorney Frank Himel said he was pleased with the outcome.

"The judge was more than fair, more than fair," Himel said.

I guess my question is: if you are more than fair, aren't you clearly being unfair somewhere? If we decide to split a cookie evenly and I take 60% of if, I was totally more than fair. I guess this comes down to zero-sum games versus not, but I think it is still a silly statement.

Michael Vick and the Prisoner's Dilemma

If I ever go back to teaching math, I'll need to remember this week for a great example for a lecture on game theory. We are watching a real-life version of the famous Prisoner's Dilemma. For those unfamiliar with the PD, wikipedia has a good summary. Basically, the problem is described as a scenario where two prisoners are separately brought in for questioning. If either one cooperates with police (confesses and gives up the other guy), they will get a reduced sentence. If neither one cooperates (both keep quiet), then they will both get the lightest sentence possible. However, if one doesn't cooperate while the other does, the non-cooperator will get the harshest sentence possible.

Here is a nice table directly taken from Wikipedia:

	Prisoner B Stays Silent	Prisoner B Betrays
Prisoner A Stays Silent	Each serves six months	Prisoner A serves ten years Prisoner B goes free
Prisoner A Betrays	Prisoner A goes free Prisoner B serves ten years	Each serves five years

From a game theory standpoint, even though it is in the prisoners best interest to not talk to the police, the risk of the harsh sentence entices both prisoners to betray each other.

So, why the heck bring it up now? Well, I think we're seeing this play out right now with the Michael Vick investigation. For those not up on their NFL scandals, Vick has been indicted on charges related to running a dog fighting ring. The really interesting part is that a few of his cohorts were also indicted. One of them already plead guilty a few weeks ago. This started the pressure on the other three, including Vick. Now there has been an announcement that Vick's two other buddies are scheduled to enter pleas later this week. Uh-oh.

If you look at the table above, that could put all of them squarely (or, more precisely, rectangularly) in the lower right box. Granted, I am sort of forcing this analogy a bit especially since there is likely a boatload of evidence coaxing these confessions, but it is still fascinating to watch from a game theoretic standpoint. It is also fascinating to watch in terms of hoping dog torturers get their comeuppances.

Yves redux

Alright, I was hard on Yves in my last post about them. So I thought I'd share my latest positive experience with one of their products. I bought some of Yves Meatless Ground. I am a sucker for sales at the grocery store. I understand that many of these "sale" prices are somewhat artificial, but I still go for them, especially when they have those five special words: "Buy one, get one free". Oh yeah. So I got a couple of these fake ground beef things.

Now the trick was to figure out what to do with it. I ended up feeling a bit nostalgic for the cuisine of my youth. Sweet, sweet Hamburger Helper. Lasagna flavor to be exact. Using the fake meat actually was pretty darn good in the HH. I'd say that kids and many adults wouldn't think too much about it if they tried this. The texture is a bit different (bit chewy), but really the flavor comes from the HH packet anyway. And the Meatless ground is a bit cheaper than the real thing. Especially at buy one get one free.

Transformers

This may contain a weak spoiler or two.

I go to the movies only about once every few months nowadays. My seasonal trip to the theatre took me to Transformers last night. Oh boy. Lots of crazy animation, a few explosions and a whole heap of transformations! The most AMAZING transformation of the movie, though, was the how the movie transformed my childhood joy into a pile of crap. So disappointing. I know it may be a little shocking to hear that a Michael Bay film lacked and semblance of soul, but, alas, it did. It wasn't that I was expecting anything too deep or moving, but it would have been nice to care a little about the main characters (or ANY characters for that matter). I guess it is good to see that some aspect of the 2-D original cartoon series was preserved in the flatness of the characters. Megatron wasn't in the movie much, but he had way more personality than anyone/thing in the movie. I almost wanted him to destroy the earth. Oh, spoiler alert: he doesn't destroy the earth.

Another interesting thing to look out for is the treatment of African-Americans in the film. There are a few black characters, a car salesman, a computer hacker, a soldier, and one of the transformers, Jazz, talks like a street stereotype. I'll just point you to this other blog post to get a more in depth understanding of Bay's treatment of these characters. Spoiler alert: To that, I'd only add that Jazz is the only Autobot ("good" transformer) that doesn't survive. For fun, take a look at how the Latino soldier and the Indian(?) phone operator characters.

More than meets the eye indeed.

Max memory in Toshiba Satellite 1955-S803

Just a quick note about the laptop I use at work--a Tosihba Satellite 1955-S803. It is a bit old (2004?) with a Pentium 4. Anyway, the documentation I found online said this thing has a maximum 1GB of memory. It comes standard with 2 256MB sticks. Things were sluggish and the only memory I had available was a 1GB stick, so I popped it in place of one of the 256s and thought to myself: "Self, you should just leave that other 256 in there and see what the heck happens." I listened to myself. I assumed that nothing too bad would happen. Worst case I figured that the motherboard hardware just wouldn't recognize anything over 1GB, but would make use of up to that amount. Too my delight, Linux booted up just fine and checking /proc/meminfo showed me the full 1.25 GB was recognized. Awesome. So the moral of this engrossing tale is that you can't always trust the info from the folks selling you the equipment. Sometimes you can trust your overall knowledge of computer architecture. Now, I wouldn't try and shove all kinds of stuff that doesn't belong, but this was benign enough to try. As a quick aside, I think the system will take up to the full 4GB if I had 2 2GB sticks available. If I ever try that, I'll be sure to post about it. I know you can't wait.

Brushing

Things are not looking good. A couple weeks ago I got a haircut. Something I do now once every couple months I think. I used to get no haircuts. Then in the Peace Corps I went to a buzz cut every 6 months. In the intervening years, I have reached my current rate. If I extrapolate properly, when I am 54, I will be getting a haircut every 13 minutes.

But my haircuts aren't the cause of today's very important blog entry. You may want to sit down for this. Actually, you should most always sit down when using a computer, so forget that last piece of advice. I bought a hair brush today. Yikes! Gives me shivers just thinking about it! Luckily I haven't used it yet. I used to have a brush back in the days when I never cut my hair (man, that was a sweet ponytail). But since then, I haven't bothered with combs or brushes (or rollers or blow dryers or any other such hair styling implement).

Anyway, that's it for now. Wish me luck with the new brush... I'll need it.

I've got to discuss Yves

OK, so I am vegetarian. I'm not a lifelong vegetarian though. If you spend more than 10 minutes with my grandpa, he'll surely tell you about how many pork chops I could put away at an early age. Mmmmm, pork chops. Anyway, the point is that I really like meat products. I crave meatiness quite often. To satiate these urges, I'll buy the occasional meatless meat product. I would do the "meatless meatballs = just balls" joke here, but it has been played out (I wouldn't stoop so low). By the way, the Gardenburger meatballs are the best of the lot. But I'm not here to talk about balls (ha! I stooped!).

Tonight I tried the Yves Beef Skewers. Oh man. They weren't good. I tried to overlook the visual nastiness (see photo), but it was still nasty. I will avoid a written description of how the stuff looked and just provide a picture. I think I should have a "write the caption" contest for this stuff. Please comment if you have a good caption for the skewer picture. I have about 37 I could think of off the top of my head.

Anyway, I don't recommend this stuff. Pretty nasty.

Censorship, new millenium style

I think lots of folks have linked to this, but I don't think there can be too many links to The Top 25 Censored Stories of 2007. I just spent over 45 minutes scanning the list and reading a few of the rather detailed descriptions provided by faculty and students of Sonoma State University.

Now, I am pretty liberal (and by "pretty", I mean shockingly handsome), but I still try and read things with some objectivity (I fail sometimes). But I also understand that wanting to hear all sides of a story doesn't mean that every side deserves equal weight. The synapses don't encapsulate everything about these stories, but they shed light on many important facets that aren't reported as heavily as they need to be.

In terms of politics and justice and such, I have always been conflicted between two points. First, it is in many ways our responsibility as democratic citizens to understand what is going on in our country and world. Second, there are so many stories and sources it is difficult to get the information that is necessary to gain that understanding. The second point is what makes it so easy to ignore what is happening in the world.

Now I may be babbling a little. The gist is, take the time to at least read the headlines in the list. Hopefully you'll be tempted to read about a few of the stories that we don't hear for one reason or another.

Junk Phone Calls

So for the past three weeks I have been getting a DAILY phone call from some company called "USA Meds Pharmacy" asking for Alana. Apparently they are trying to see if Alana wants some quality, low-cost medication. That is just swell. Oh, did I mention that I live alone and am not named Alana? Not so swell. I point this out to them every time and every time they tell me they will "take the number off of the database".

I am fairly certain that I am on the National Do-Not Call list, but to be certain, I followed the easiest instructions to register again: call 1-888-382-1222. I recommend that you call from the number you want on the list and take the 2 minutes to make sure you aren't getting unwanted calls.

Now the interesting part. I am expecting another call tomorrow (and the next day and the next day). I am going to try telling the guy "yeah, she's here, hold on a second." And then just putting the phone down on my desk. Maybe let him know she's on her way every minute or so. Are there any other good/fun ways to deal with this company? Leave a comment and let me know...

Spiderwebs and persistence

No, this isn't a review of the new Spiderman movie.

I was walking to the park for my daily b-ball slammy-jam session. You know, to work on my reverse, no-look, one-handed dunks (OK, I may be exaggerating a little... "daily" may not be completely accurate) . Anyway, it's that time of year around here when the little spiders are out in full force, spinning webs like wild. Basically, wherever there are two connection points within five feet of each other, these spiders try and build some webby apparatus. Most of them fail, of course. I know this because I walk through 5-10 of these starter webs every time I go outside. Normally I am just mildly annoyed and hoping there isn't a spider on my head, but today I thought more specifically about those little guys (and gals!) spinning their webs. I mean, how many webs do they have to begin before they finally find that sweet spot. That spot where no deluded basketballers will walk through it. Where one of their key anchor points doesn't drive off to buy a burrito (my truck gets lots of webs and I get lots of burritos). The single-minded tenacity of these spiders is inspirational. I think it speaks to the need to continue on one's task until it gets done. It could be small tasks like cleaning the bathtub or some larger job, like cleaning a really big tub (or what have you). Persistence actually does pay off, in the arachnid world and in the people world.

I didn't expect to get any inspiration on my 20 minute excursion this afternoon, but there it was in the form of those annoying webs that I've snarled at for a few Springtimes. Noticing things is good. Seeing the positive in the clues nature gives us is even better. Now to get to that tub....

My birthday

The more important things are, the more likely I am to talk about them well after the fact. As an illustration, my previous post about bat removers was filed within 24 hours and now I am about to describe my birthday from over a month ago.

Just wanted to show my nice little cake and the documentation of the sweet hockey game to which I was treated. Look how great both look! Sharks beat the Kings! The cake had ice cream inside! Woo hoo! I'm old! Thank you, Neelu, for both of these treats. Also, thanks to Micah for the Magic Online packs! Yow! A power-packed birthday to be sure.

Someone help me with these bats! Bats I say!

Saw a truck on the highway yesterday. On the tailgate it said "Bat problem?" with an 800 number. When I got along side of it, I could see the truck was from "Western Bat Specialists". So cool. I honestly didn't know that bats were a problem in California. Now I realize that is a testament to the way bat removal specialists take care of business.

Before I realized that these bat specialists were real, I thought it would be cool to advertise my own pest removal service for animals that no one will ever see. Perhaps penguin removal or wolverine abatement. Stencil "Wolverine Problems?" on my truck, get an 800 number and, BLAM, instant awesome business. The more I think about it, the better it sounds.

AM Radio

While driving in the Bay Area late this morning, I thought I'd spin through the AM stations. Normally I just have KCBS ready on the AM dial for my "Traffic and Weather together every 10 minutes". I came across a national talk radio station advertising an upcoming special they are going to have on the "Global Warming Myth". The guy told me (and, I suppose, everyone else listening) that this wasn't going to be a balanced report, because we already hear too much of the "propaganda" of the left. They also let me know that this was their second investigative report following the wildly successful piece on Muslim Extremists. Indeed.

This is about when I thought it would be good to cruise the dial a little. Next up was Dennis Miller. I remember liking him as a teenager watching SNL, but had heard he was a full on "loyal Bushie" now. Odd. Anyway, he had a guest on to discuss how lopsided the "debate" on Global Warming was and how so many network news stories on the subject don't even mention alternate points of view. I love when pundits grab onto one piece of information and use it as the most indicative point of the "other side's" position. In this case Dennis Miller must have heard that one thing we could do to help the environment was to use less toilet paper. So now the whole conservation movement is absurd because all those greenies have as a solution is to use one sheet of T.P. per bathroom visit. His guest was saying he didn't think the bad ol' liberals tell everyone the whole story--in particular how they don't discuss the cost of some unnamed initiative, which the pundit put at $400 billion dollars. He also noted that he hadn't decided one way or the other if global warming was real and wanted to debate the topic more. Are you convinced that molecules are real? Are you convinced that laparoscopic surgery is the best option for removal of a gall bladder? Are you convinced that multiple, slower CPU cores are a better option than larger, faster single cores? (I would ask about the Big Bang and evolution, but know better). We live in a world of vast knowledge. So much knowledge, that people can't be experts in many fields like they used to. We allow those who are experts to advise the rest of us who don't have the time to learn about their field. If the vast majority of recognized climatologists say global warming is real and we are accelerating it, I will believe them. And if the cost of profiting off of the exploitation of the environment has forced us into a situation where we need to spend lots of cash to fix it, then so be it.

OK, back to the task at hand: touring the AM dial. I listened to Dennis Miller until my last ounce of respect for him dissipated. I found that there were 4 or 5 Asian language stations and 4 or 5 Spanish language stations (I can't know for certain, but I don't think these stations were spewing right-wing claptrap) to go with 2 news station and 2 sports stations. To round out the trip there were TWO stations with the same Rush Limbaugh broadcast. Yikes. That whole "liberal media" conspiracy that the right has passed off as real was done very well the last 10 years.

Visualizing our consumption

Found this story via a CNET post. It is one of those neat, scary, weird, sad kind of things. Trying to visualize how much we consume as a country is a pretty monumental task. As a mathematician, I would always try to describe things with numbers. The problem is that when numbers get too large, many people have no reference point for them and the numbers become meaningless. That's why people come up with ways to describe things based on how high of a stack they might make or how many times they could circle the earth if put end-to-end. Anyway, Chris Jordan has tried to actually show us what those numbers look like. I mean, 60,000 plastic bags every 5 seconds, sheesh.

A monumental task pulled off quite well. Worth the 30 seconds of computer energy to see (you could, of course, install BOINC for some of those unused computer cycles, but that is another story for another blog entry on another day)....

photo downloaded from Chris Jordan's site, http://www.chrisjordan.com/

Disassembly of a Sharp TM150 cell phone

I have had a Sharp TM150 cell phone for a couple years now. It works well and I haven't had any complaints. But I recently thought, "hey, I don't have no games nowhere on here, nohow." Sometimes it's fun to think in multiple negatives, I highly recommend it.

The whole t-zones thing from T-mobile still somewhat confuses me. When I bought the phone I was under the impression that I could have games, but t-zones won't let me download any. Lame. So I searched for "Sharp TM150 games" and found some sites that would let you download things. The phone has java installed, so these games seem to be .jar archives. The weird, highly disappointing part is that there is no way that I can find to install a game. There is a removable memory card that is handy for moving pictures from the phone to my computer and vice-versa, so it seemed logical that a .jar could be moved likewise. Not gonna happen. Lame.

So the only way to get things installed seems to be to download them. To download them, you have to use some service not run by t-mobile, and it will cost you. But to have access to the Internet you'll need to pay t-mobile an extra monthly fee. Not sounding worth it for a Tetris knock-off I'll use only a couple times a month. Lame.

I would have hoped that the process for installing things on my phone would be more open... a bit naive maybe. So to get a little more to the root of the problem, I cracked the phone open. I wish I could have documented it better with some pictures, but my only camera is actually on my phone. Sorry. My main goal was to kill a half hour and find out what processor is actually in the phone. I achieved the first part, but the second part was a failure. The bottom half of the case (the half with the buttons, as opposed to the half with the screen) opened pretty easily. There are only four screws. You'll need to remove the battery and the little activation card thing that t-mobile supplies. And I think the memory card should be out also. Unfortunately, the processor is located underneath a bunch of casing for the memory card and the charger interface. Couldn't see the chip at all. Oh well.

If I find more info about the phone, I'll be sure to update it here.

"Straight up" whack

I am easily confused by many things... not the least of which being the music industry. Maybe someone out there can explain this one. Here is the quote (emphasis mine) from the article in question:

"...Paula Abdul has apparently decided to revisit her days as a recording artist by putting out a greatest hits album, titled Greatest Hits: Straight Up! The album, slated to hit stores on May 8, will include all six of her number one singles and eight top 10 hits. It's the first release from Abdul since her last greatest hits album, 2000's Paula Abdul: Greatest Hits."

So how can one have a greatest hits album, publish no other music, and then have a new greatest hits album 7 years later?

I think that when I get my first record deal, I jump straight to the greatest hits album right off the bat.

The pants make the sponge

I like me some Sponge Bob, but I don't think I'll ever be able to watch it with the same innocent glee after reading about this litigation. Appearently a guy had a little cartoon character he peddled locally (Northern California) in the early 90's. Being a sponge, he was rectangular and yellow with eyes and feet. His name was Bob Spongee.

Bob Spongee? Oh man, that is awesome. Best quote from the article:

Viacom's attorneys have said in court documents that Sponge Bob is different than Bob Spongee.

"Defendants' work(s) are not substantially similar to any protectible elements of any of plaintiff's allegedly infringed works," attorneys wrote in response to Walker's complaint.

That is golden. They are quite a bit different though. Bob Spongee is married and wears no pants, while Sponge Bob is a dedicated bachelor and has squarepants. I can't really put my finger on what I love so much about this story, but I do enjoy well-written cartoons, litigation, and the tainting of innocence by major corporations so I guess my joy makes sense.

Oh, there is an official Bob Spongee page. Enjoy.

Good, evil, and burritos

I'm from California... born and raised. As such I enjoy a good burrito now and then. Little did I know on my most recent trip to Taqueria Vallarta in Felton, would place me smack dab in the middle of a battle between good and evil of biblical proportions. Oh, even though I am from California, I still say things like "smack dab" (my grandparents were from Oklahoma and South Dakota). Anyway, back to God and Satan and all that. Look at my order number:


Oh, man. I think it is a sign. The odds of getting this number are 1 in a million. Really. I did the math. How often is something actually 1 in a million? I mean, you hear that phrase all the time, but to actually be "1 in a million" is pretty crazy... on top of the fact good and evil are in a play here.

OK, that's it... I feel better now that I blogged that out.

Battling the Audiophase mp3 player

Just bought a cheapo mp3 player a week ago: the Audiophase KP512. I think the information here is probably useful to any of the Audiophase mp3 players (I know there is a 1GB (KP1000?) version, probably others).

I was able to sync up some files with Windows Media Player 10.5 and the player worked well for a couple days. Then I added a couple more files and when I next tried to use the player, it told me there were 'no files'. Lame. I checked the information available on the player itself and it noted that there were 300+MB of files on it--my songs. Lamer.

So when I got home I did a little bit of research on the inter-webs and found out that it wasn't a unique problem. But beyond the advice given there, I didn't find much else. So, if anything that I have gone through can help anyone else, here goes....

I used the Windows Media Player to re-format the mp3 player. Now I realize that if you want to format your player, just delete everything by hand as that's all WMP does. Thinking that maybe WMP was part of the problem (check some of this discussion), I downloaded MediaMonkey (free and very well done) to do my syncing. Had the same issues, but I do like MediaMonkey.

Finally broke down and tried the RealPlayer to sync things. While I found some other issues with that (said some mp3 files weren't transferable for some reason), the process worked. I think that the issue MIGHT have to do with how folders are created in the syncing process. RealPlayer seems to just toss all the files into the root directory. This is fine for this size player, since there won't be over 256 songs on it. 256 is the limit for files in a directory I think. I'll need to experiment some more with the other players to see if this is actually the issue.

Another work around, which may be a little annoying is to just copy the files as if the player is a USB key or some other drive. That works too. Like I said, some more experimentation may be in order to find out the real issue. I don't want to temp fate just yet though since I actually have my music ready to listen to. That fact may tempt me to exercise tomorrow!

Oh, and the 'tech support' for Audiophase as listed in the user manual just goes to some guy's desk. I don't think leaving him a message is really doing any good. If he isn't tech actually tech support, I am sure he is kinda sick of those calls.

Disassembly of an Inspiron 1000 (or how I battled an army of Dell screws and won)

So I've had this Inspiron 1000 for a couple years now and have tried a few times to crack open the case but was either too frustrated or too bored to finish the job. Tonight I found an important clue here. So the game was afoot!

Removing the keyboard securing strip required a little more force than I would have expected. But then again, I think I broke a plastic tab doing it, maybe there was a gentler way to do it. It doesn't seem any worse for the wear after re-assembly, thankfully. Here is a super low-res, blurry photo to illustrate the strip removal:


When you take it off, you'll need to kind of pop it off of the hinge behind the monitor first. Then laying the monitor completely open, you can jimmy the rest open.

Oh, remember to remove the battery before doing any of this stuff. Oh, and don't take my word as gospel on any of this stuff, I'm just a guy who felt like voiding his warranty and couldn't find any better instructions on the Internet (the Dell manuals are lacking). Don't do any of this stuff if you aren't comfortable with basic static safety or don't have the right screwdrivers or haven't taken apart a desktop before or whatever.

Anyway, to get the rest of the case off, you'll need to remove the hard drive and find some secret screws in there. And note there are a couple screws under that keyboard strip:



Heck, there are screws freaking everywhere. My strategy was to unscrew every screw possible until stuff fell apart. It's good practice to keep track of all of the screws somehow. I had a separate piles for monitor screws (there are four), all of the internal screws, the hard drive related screws and all of the underneath screws. Screws!

When I got inside, I was a little overzealous and tried to remove the heatsink on the bus controller and broke the screws (more screws!). So be careful with that:


I was very excited to see that at the end of the whole deal, I didn't have any extra parts and that Windows booted up still and the keyboard still worked. Phew. Now we'll wait and see if the heatsink thing bites me later (I kinda taped it in place).

This was just a Sunday night exercise for me (either that or watch "The Surreal Life"), but if I ever need to replace the keyboard or fan or whatever, I guess I'll know how now.

Planar Chaos prerelease action

My first post to this blog. I started this because I have many good times playing Magic and wanted to keep a record of some of those highlights. If you aren't familiar with Magic, then there won't be much for you here. I wouldn't expect much strategy and what not either, just some of my own experiences.

The major inspriration for this post is the prerelease event I attended two weeks ago. I opened some great Blue and Red for the sealed portion (Psionic Blast, Draining Whelk, Magus of the Scroll, splash white for Lightning Angel, etc). Ended up 3-1 and won some packs. The interesting stuff happened after the sealed tourney during the Two-Headed Giant....

My buddy Micah and I opened a fairly mediocre set of cards, but did the best we could. We won one and lost one. The third match was an eye-opener in many ways. Our opponents start fairly fast by suspending a halberdier and dropping a couple 1cc and 2cc creats. On turn 4 the fireworks went off. One of them played Sunlance, Uktabi Drake and Scryb Ranger. The other guy then casts Empty the Warrens for 8 goblins. At the time it just seemed like a nice couple of hands coming together for a big play. They mentioned that they had gotten it to got off for 16 in an earlier match. Needless to say, they ended up winning. It didn't really dawn on us until later that they had quite possibly cheated. Usually in sealed it wouldn't be likely to get 5-6 really good 1cc and 2cc spells in two colors that you can cast by turn 4. It would seem the support player (the non-warrens guy) would have to have several 1cc and 2cc cards in order to have that many to cast on turn 4 (not to mention the couple he cast before turn 4). The warrens guy also had at least one suspend card to support the warrens as well. The decks, in retrospect, are block-constructed quality for 2HG. But this was a low k-value event and there weren't any decklists. I guess we could have asked to count their cards and sb to make sure no extras were slipped in, but if they were smart enough, they could have made the counts come out right.

I know now that I won't be shy to ask a judge to count an opponent's cards. I really don't mind losing, but losing to cheaters is no fun. They are like theives, taking prizes away from more honest folk. Not to mention how they taint the experience.

I know it wasn't a clear-cut case of cheating, but my 2HG partner and I have played for nearly 20 years combined and this is the first time we'd really sensed something like this. Anyway, if any of this post made sense to you, you must play as well. Would you have suspected anything in this scenario? Do you think I am paranoid? Would you have acted on any suspicions? Just curious.