For what it's worth, I made a modification to the sketch that makes the thing properly random. Basically, instead of generating a random value just when switchState == LOW, I added reply = random(11); on every void loop. So it's just endlessly creating random reply values ad infinitum rather than just when the conditions are met. Seems to work, it'll be interesting to see if this is due to using a simple switch once I getb the tilt switch I ordered. All kind of weird.