Life: Someone attempted to access my Spam Microsoft Hotmail Account

Fortunately, the account they attempted to hack is an account that I use for all non-personal uses. I don't know if anyone has ever successfully hacked my email to my knowledge, but it is likely there may have been a person that I am unaware of. I have changed my passwords multiple times when Microsoft messages that there seems to be suspicious activity.

Changed Password

Today I got that message about two hours ago. I completely forgot my password so I reset the password. It then sends a code to the Authenticator app but I have never set up this account to my Authenticator app so I cannot receive the code. I send it to a backup email. Change password. Signed in, wants to verify with Authenticator app. Changed it back to email. Which then had me change my password again. (All passwords can be repeated so I have to come up with a new password that I am likely to forget again since I rarely use this account except to get verification emails). Finally able to access email and added to my Authenticator.

Suspicious Activity

Quickly went to the account access history and I see a whole list of different countries for the last 3 weeks. The first few activity were 3-8 days apart (Russia, US, and Canada). Then it suddenly bursts into multiple attempts within the last 6 hours which appears to be about 5 attempts per hour. Each time from a different country. 

Why did it take 4 hours for the suspicious activity to be triggered? From activity history after Russia, US, and Canada, there were China, Morocco, India, Mexico, Egypt, Peru, Indonesia, Brazil, Azerbaijan, Vietnam, Iran, Albania, Cambodia, and Spain. All that within 6 hours. It seems it should have triggered after the first hour. Who can possibly travel that quickly or change that many VPNs or that many cloud services in such a short period time with no past history of doing so?

Summary

Looks like someone attempted to hack my email. I changed the password. I find it suspicious why it took so long for the Suspicious activity to be triggered. Fortunately, no harm appears to have been done. History says no successful logins. Even if successful, account isn't used for anything but still sucks to have to remember yet another password.

Buggish: Windows Files In Use (Locked) but Still Able to Rename thus Not In Use

There are times that I am unable to overwrite a file in a destination folder. There is nothing that I am aware of that has it open. Whether I use script or using Windows Explorer, it is unable to overwrite the file. But I can rename the file then copy the file.

If I am able to rename the file, this seems to indicate that the file is not in use. Sooooooooooo.... I have no idea what is going on. I have been able to do this for years and does not appear to have ever been resolved. This has also been impossible to search on Google because everyone is searching for resolution for a file that is actually locked or in use (although unknowingly to them).

Scammish: MtGA suspiciously manipulating matches

I run a primarily mono-red burn deck. Major weakness is enchantments. I play against a lot of enchantment decks. So much that I put in a single disenchant. I already had a dual land with white for a kicker.

Suddenly, I stopped facing any enchantment decks. I hold onto a disenchent card and never used it over 50+ games. I was losing even more often. I removed it, and instantly I played against enchantment decks.

Not just immediately, but for the next several games as if the system was queueing it up. I put my disenchant back in and no more enchantment decks.

Also suddenly, I was playing against (suspiciously different people yet seems almost exactly the same decks) were what appeared to be multi-colored shrine decks. I have to face several spirits that come out of nowhere. Also nowhere to find are my 5 burn down the house cards. Yet I always seem to manage to get my lone single strangle card each game.

I also seem to never get the End of Festivities (1 damage to all creatures) whenever I play against a small aggro create deck.

I always seem to play against black decks that have all 4 cut down (or whatever it is called).

I always seem to play against counters that have the right counter non-creature or counter creature through several rounds of single-card hands (ie they have no other cards in hand).

I always seem to play against single-color decks who happen to have 3-4 (probably 4 because I cannot survive past 3) of the largest anti-burn creatures. I just played against a player who played 3 Totalarian Terrors by round 6. Fine that he was able to cast one by round 5, then he plays 2 more right the next round. I barely have 4 mountains in a 60-card deck with 24 mountains. And he is able to pull 3 Totalarian Terrors in the same amount of time. I don't even own a single Totalarian Terror.

I always seem to play against a white deck that has the just the right amount of exile cards. No exile cards when I have no creatures, exiles up the wazoo when I have several creatures, etc. How do I know because they run out of cards. And I then suddenly get flooded with lands.

Speaking of land floods, they always seem to occur at the most critical points of the game. I am winning 20 to low single-digit. Then suddenly, 8 to 10 lands in a row. I have the red cards where I can cast 2 exile cards (which will turn up two lands) and the one where I discard one to get two cards with two treasures (ie mana) which would also turn up more lands. I would have a hand of lands. Odds? I have a 60-card deck. So my deck is 40% land yet after counting my lands with remaining cards, I have about 70% of my played cards are lands. 

The deck builder crashes all the time!! This was added because I had to restart the game several times just to look up some of the card names. You can see where I gave up above.

Sooooooo..........

Could I have been so randomly bad? maybe

Did I somehow upset lady luck? maybe

But for this simple-minded player, these odds seem terribly suspicious.

Scammish: Magic the Gathering Arena Mobile App RNG (MtGA)

This may be more broken RNG than it is a scam, although according to other netizen's anecdotes could be scammish favoring P2W. P2W is too difficult for me to analyze. I do not have any suspicions of it but I do not think I could tell. Definitely, there are players with cards that completely trump any of my decks but it is not like those cards are inaccessible to me... and I can see F2P players potentially grinding to have those cards. Those decks are pretty rare to play against, and I suppose I am fine with it once in a while. It is kind of cool to see some rarer cards. 

A mono-color red deck with 25 lands of a 60 card deck

• 80% of my starting hands have two lands.
• With more than 33% of my deck being land, I should on average 2-3 two lands on equal ratios
• On very rare occasions I have one land. Maybe once in a hundred games (~about once a week while playing around 30 games a day)
• Many of my starting hands that more than two lands come only after multiple losses
• Several hands where I have all the same non-land cards
• several games where opponent has all 4 of the same non-land cards within 3-5 rounds
• For poker fans, the odds of getting a four of a kind 0.02% chance in 5 cards and 0.1% chance in 7 cards. So the odds of getting all four with a 60 card deck vs 52 card deck is lower. 
• Each day, I may get what seems like two normal games where the opponent and I get a normal distribution of lands
• Majority of games, the opponent always has the right amount of lands and correct land to play multi-color decks
• I have faced several multi-color decks that have been able to get play lands each round and has one of each color to play very rare legend cards at exactly five rounds while I almost always struggle to get more than two of a single color.
• I have faced several games where I go on a drought pulling 10+ cards multiple times
• With 33% lands, 5 non-land cards in a row would be a 13.5% chance.
• I have also faced several games where I get 10+ lands within the first 20 cards
• I get nearly half my lands after 13 pulls which typically starts with 2 lands
• With 33% lands, 5 land cards in a row would be 0.3% and 7 in a row would be 0.04%
• I have also played games where I draw 6-8 consecutive lands
• Opponent always seem to have land. On very, very, very rare case I will see an opponent have any sort of drought. I have several games with only 2-3 lands the entire game. My opponents always have at least 4, and reach 8 lands on a very regular basis and always has spells.
• Opponent very rarely has land drought. I have maybe seen this 5 times after hundreds of games. Maybe once a day, I'll have
• Deck contains about 6 cards pertaining to creating creatures or creature spells. On many occasions, I will get all creature spells at the start of the game. 

Occasionally, I play multiple colors

• There have been many games where I would get 3 lands of one type and 4 cards of the other type. For example, there have been several games I would get 3 plains with 4 green spells or 3 forests with 4 white spells
• This is also a good number of games when only looking at only starting with 3 land hands which in itself is already rare
• With nearly half the deck with lands (28 lands in a 60 card deck), majority of the time I only see two lands.
• Not only is two lands the norm, several times I will not see another land for another 5 or 6 cards.
• Many of the times I go on a drought, I also face very low odd decks where they run 3-5 colors. And they have always get the lands that they need while I barely get two colors on equal frequency as my opponents.

Matchups

• I am always able to find opponents at any time of day. With absolutely no evidence, I suspect most of my opponents are not real players (ie bots, employees, not actual random people, etc).

EDIT 2011-11-14

After this post, my land distributions seem to have improved a bit. I will have about 3-4 lands after 20 cards. This at least is playable and have been able to win on rare occasions.