[Tutor] Hanging myself on substitution

[kromag@nsacom.net]

I have asked variants of this question several times, but for some reason it 
just doesn't stick. This is a simple "pick ten cards" reader that guffs a 
list out of a text file, chooses one "card", prints it to the screen, then 
removes the "card" from the list. 

What I am trying to do recalculate the number of items in the list. I count 
them, then put that number as the second integer in a random.randint() 
function.

-------begin pickacard.py-----------

import random
import string
cards=open('\windows\desktop\cards.txt','r')
schmack=cards.readlines()
counter=0
while counter <10:
        total_cards=len(schmack)
'''here is where my pain begins...'''
        choose=random.randint(1,%i)% total_cards #<-grrr!
	chosen=schmack[choose] 
	del schmack[choose]
	print chosen
	counter=counter+1
-------end pickacard.py------------

of course the depricated:

random.randint(1, string.atoi(`total_cards`))

as in:

------begin uglypickacard.py------
import random
import string
cards=open('\windows\desktop\cards.txt','r')
schmack=cards.readlines()
total_cards=len(schmack)
counter=0
while counter <10:
	total_cards=len(schmack)
	choose=random.randint(1,string.atoi(`total_cards`))
	chosen=schmack[choose] 
	del schmack[choose]
	print chosen
	counter=counter+1
-------end uglypickacard.py---------

seems to work fine. What is the proper method so's I don't shoot myself in 
the foot later?