Protip

Everything is needlessly more complicated when you don't read the introductory "Thank you for choosing our service, here are a few things you should know" e-mail. After you read that it's just needfully complicated.

Good News

I talked to my Dad, who, in addition to being a lawyer, works by himself instead of as part of a firm (he's actually a PC -- a personal corporation) and he said that I have no legal responsibilities to the state because I'm below their tax threshold. I also have no employees and I don't have any property or rents to worry about.

Over under

I'm starting to teach myself CSS (and it doesn't help that I'm coming down with a cold), but learning this kind of stuff always makes me wish I were either younger than I am, because then I could take classes on it for credit, or that I had been more interested in computer stuff when I was growing up. Then I would already know it and be able to do what I wanted to do without studying a tutorial with a head cold.

Starting up

I settled on The Rutland Advocate after a long and fruitless Facebook discussion where I asked my friends for advice. My original choice was The Rutland Tribune, but that already existed, although it's now Green Mountain Outlook. Then I thought about The Rutland Post, but decided it was too staid. I also thought about The Rutland Vindicator (Youngstown, Ohio's paper), but decided it was too confrontational and my old editor at The Massachusetts Daily Collegian, Alyssa Creamer, suggested The Rutland Recorder, but I felt that was too neutral.

Other names suggested: Stuck-in-a-Rut Gazette, The Rutvegas Sun, The Daily Rutter, Robare's Rutting Rutland and The Rutland Universe.

One of the things that made me hesitant about starting a startup was the cost. Following startup news you see a lot of large figures in funding get thrown around, but so far (domain name registration and webhosting) the costs have been less than many popular consumer electronics. I haven't yet gotten to the filing process for dealing with the state of Vermont, which brings me on to an important topic: networking.

Starting a business in your hometown is a lot easier than starting one elsewhere. My Dad is a lawyer and has been practicing in Vermont since he passed the Bar Exam in the 80s. He has been to court in every part of the state and argued in front of the state Supreme Court (I took AP US History with the current Chief Justice's daughter in high school), so my name recognition isn't as bad as it would be in, say, Boston. On top of that, Vermont's small population and geographic proximity have meant that members of the state legislature are more accesible than in other states (Texas, the state with the second largest population has a legislature the same size as Vermont's and California, the state with the largest population, has a smaller one). On a more local note, I've known the current city treasurer since I was seven or eight. Most notably, former Vermont governor Madeleine Kunin is a UMass graduate and even edited the Ed/Op section of The Collegian!

I've been at this for two days and already all my assumptions have been shattered into dust and blown away.