The Sting’s “confidence game” acts reminded me of my just completed woodstove install. The players, actions, and events of this little drama all built confidence toward a preconceived conclusion on the part of the “stingee” (me in this case) that getting a new wood stove would be a relatively simple process along a well thought out path that others had traveled before me. And while the end result is what I wanted, a new wood stove, the journey sure as hell felt like a sting operation.

• The Players – me, my 1977 Vermont Castings Vigilant wood stove, The City of Keene, US Tax Code
• The Hook – $1000 voucher to replace an old wood stove, 30% tax credit, help with cleaner air
• The Tale – take a few pictures, fill out a form or 2, draw a floor plan, get a permit, get a voucher, take voucher to store, pick out a stove, subtract $1000, pay balance, installed wham – new stove, deduct 30% of final bill (including install) from bottom line of taxes.
• The Shutout – How big is that hearth and what’s it made of? Fire codes have changed in 30 years, need a new hearth, new non-combustible protection for  rear wall, new double-wall stove pipe for chimney connection, $$$$, oh and here’s a new form that we didn’t tell you about at first, and by the way that’ll be $75 for the permit.
• The Sting – money already committed to purchase, paper work filled out, permits obtained, do I really need this? Nothing really wrong with the old stove. Could invest money in other projects? Don’t really need tax write-off. Sniff, air quality seems fine to me.. sigh.. I’m already here – might as well continue.

To be fair, every one of the players (including the vendor/installer) was as helpful as the could be. The people at city hall went out of the way to be helpful and answered my questions no matter how many trips I had to make. The vendor and installer were professional and told me exactly what they needed from me in order to do the job right. I read all the documents available to make sure I thought I understood what I was getting into.

If I had to add another act to this saga, I guess it would be called “The Gripes”:

• Timing – This is probably my largest issue. The program only had $100,000 in vouchers. At $1000 per person only 100 people could participate in the program. With a population of 22-23K it seemed like “first come, first serve” would go fast. Add to it that once accepted into the program a new stove had to be purchased within 21 days. Install could drag out but the purchase had to be complete. Oh and the program only lasts from Oct. 22, 2009 – Jan. 29, 2010 – slightly more than 3 months from start to finish. Don’t forget the holidays…
• Requirements – there should have been a fire code/pre-install check list to ensure that the consumer understood the areas in and around the install that may need to be addressed. Hearth construction requirements, sizing issues, non-combustible space requirements, all fees, etc. Finding these out as I went along and from different people (mostly the vendor and installers) make the process feel unorganized and haphazard. Granted I could have done more up-front investigation but the “time constraints” on the project meant that things had to happen quickly.
• Game changing – to be fair, I didn’t get my install permit finished until just before the install. Problem was there was a “new form” to complete before getting the permit that neither I or the vendor had ever seen. If I had completed the permit right after the purchase, the form would not have been required – my bad. Still, adding a step to the process that some had to complete and others didn’t smacks me the wrong way. I certainly understand the need for the extra form but the city should have thought of that before hand and once added, informed all parties of the change and what it meant.

Fast forward several years.

A political cartoon in the New York Post that depicts police shooting a chimp has outraged the “Al Sharpton” gang enough to protest because they believe the chimp represents President Obama. The cartoon makes reference to the massive economic stimulus bill that was recently signed, but there’s no label on the chimp. Never mind the fact that a chimp was recently shot by the cops for attacking a person. They would rather have a conspiracy to shout about rather than believe in Occam’s Razor. If anything the chimp represents Congress to me.

I guess we’re not that different. Some elements of our advanced American society are just as over-sensitive and reactionary as Muslim extremists. I’m sure I’ll be tagged as a racist or religious bigot for that statement at some point.

Update - The Post issued a statement on the cartoon.

Over that weekend, 08/17/2008, the building that houses our office was struck by lightening. Except for 1 piece of equipment, there was no damage. However, that 1 piece of equipment, our T1 line, is essential to doing business. The other 11 people in that office are web developers and our ability to do our work depends on being connected to our company intranet and the internet at large.

So far actually getting Sprint to send someone out to look at it is a nightmare. They’re confident that the problem is on our end and we’re really confident that it isn’t. They just want to talk remotely to the “smart jack” and run “loop test” and say “it’s fine on our end”. Well come look at it in person from my end you jerks!

Lots of phone calls and still nobody is coming to take a look. Hell, I’m about ready to rip the damn box out of the wall, stop paying for the service I’m not getting and start paying somebody else, perhaps even the local cable company for a business connection. May not be T1 speed but then again I don’t have T1 speed now.

** Updated 2008.08.20 ** As of this morning we’re back on line. After hollering at the Sprint Customer Service rep they finally managed to send someone out. Turns out there were two problems one on their end and one on ours, but it was impossible to see ours until the alarm light on the T1 box was fixed.

After puttering around with the system for a little over a day I can honestly say that once I figured out how it worked, I ended up liking it. It’s really made a dent in the amount of daily spam that I’m receiving even while retaining a “catch-all” capability. What I did was the following:

1. Merged most of the domains that I manage into a common domain from Postini’s point of view so that mail coming from those domains is treated by a single set of Postini rules.
2. Created Postini based email addresses that matched the specific email addresses that were serving as “catch-all” mail boxes at the various domains.
3. For each mail box, established a list of Postini “user” aliases that I wanted to run the Postini spam filtering against. Addresses not matching the mail box name or the aliases go through the Postini system without filtering.
4. From the spam emails that were avoiding the Postini filter from step #3, I pulled out the most commonly used addresses and through my ISP established email forwarding rules that directed those addresses to a non-existent account causing emails using that address to bounce. In some specific cases I added the address as an approved “user” alias at Postini.
5. Kept repeating step 4 until the level of spam fell to near zero

Sounds like a lot of work, but in reality it wasn’t. The hardest part was wrapping my head around the way Postini handles catch-all addressing in the absence of a specific option. I had to just “trial and error” it until I figured it out. Once I understood the “rules” I quickly figured out how to leverage the Postini configuration and my ISP’s email forwarding rules to work in conjunction to achieve a better email filtering system. In essence I’m using the stuff that gets through Postini as a feedback loop to the email forwarding system. Right now step 4 is a manual process but I could easily make that programmatic.

At any rate, by the end of day 2 my email has gone from near 1000 pieces of spam per day down to a managable 100 or so and dropping every time I get new spam. Not bad for a few hours invested in figuring out the constraints and learning to work effectively within them.

Initially I though that one of my friends became part of a “bot net” and was unknowingly sending spam emails. Turns out it’s an internet-wide issue – read it yourself at Slashdot.

** update ** 08.07.2008 – they are still coming in at the rate of 200-400 per day