Your story and scene setup sounds cool, Kirk.. i like that you had a Texas theme, that should be worth extra points.
I had a LOT of trouble with the random number function.. I found 2 random functions in the 'world' object --> 'function' tab, but neither one seemed to relate to random numbers. I played around with one of them, couldn't get it to work, then email Prof. Xeriland for assistance.
He emailed me an example program, and once I saw the code, I understood which one I should use. After that, it was a snap to make my character jump up and down at random heights.
I agree with your feedback in one of the other posts.. there's a lot of tweaking that I'd like to have time to do, to make each of my animations that much better, smoother, more 'animated'. Lack of time is always a factor, as the deadline for each assignment comes up very quickly.