The Ginter story Part I

Hi Guys,

Just wanted to say thank you to all for the kind words and congratulations. Nick broke the news on a forum and did not get such a favorable response, in fact many people were pretty and being a bit nasty. I know that it can be perceived that we can be "rubbing it in", but really anything said was based off of pure adrenaline and excitement that the contest was officially closed. I would like to think that anybody would have done the same. It has been a long week of waiting and a little doubt was starting to creep in my mind. I kept going over the last steps over and over to see if we missed a tiny step. Both Nick and I kept sending "test" emails over the last several days to see if the auto-response changed. It did not until today.

Here's pretty much how it unfolded for me. I was sitting at my work desk when I got a call from Nick. He wondered if I was at home since I had not checked my email in the last couple of hours. For some reason the phone was ringing off the hook today, so I just forgot to look (plus you get tired of those chest and abs and white teeth ads on Yahoo!).

I started to get excited and went to open up my email. He said "sorry dude, I dont mean to get you too excited, its not that big of a deal". We he was bluffing big because what he had sent me was an email from the ginter address that congratulated him for being the first, and only person to date, to crack the ginter code. They mentioned that a rep from Topps would be in touch to discuss the prize".

Then I tried the test email again and got the auto-response that the code was cracked! then obviously chaos ensued!

So whats next?

I spoke with Nick, who was going out of town for the weekend. Post of us agreed that we want to get the solution out there for you guys to read ASAP if you are interested in knowing. Just putting together a reasonable step-by-step is going to take a bit of time. There are a couple ways we thought about doing this. Either we can just spell it all out in text direction, or if you would like, we can break it into sections that will "guide" you on how to solve it. Its up to you. What do you think?

I will work on some steps over the weekend and wait for Nick to check in at the end of the week. Hopefully we can have something up by early next week, but I am always open to questions if you want to email me over the weekend.

In the meantime, I am going to start cracking my remaining two boxes of A&G and see if I can't complete the set!

Thanks again for being the "nice" group. It is kinda an awkward feeling, but you have all been great! On with the blog!