I emailed the lawyer who had responded back, and received another response, that basically suggested that because his name was in the email address I provided him to contact me with, he thought that suspicious and bot-like. I create separate email for each contact (even friends), which does reveal who sells my info to spammers, or who has it hacked out of their systems. That way I can shut down spam right away, or burn the infected email alias and create a new one. So I emailed him back, explaining all that, and told him what an honest face he had in his photo, and gave him some more details of my business idea (which I can't share here, or someone would steal it ); and on his third message he caved in and said:
"Yes, you got me.
Frankly, I like geeks. You sound pretty interesting."
So I guess I still have some charm. Took three emails; but I melted through his defenses, and now we've scheduled one face-to-face meeting before going to virtual meetings (I will have to drive to town)... but it's progress!
How do you free-advice experts feel about the paid advice expert? Taxing Matters could be getting paid for those fish. BTW, how to handle the baskets was a very useful fish. I had not understood capital gains clearly at all until then (before I thought it was just for stocks and people who kept up with Wall Street, but didn't know capital gains applied to pretty much every personal belonging). Over at the just answer site, I would of had to pay $6 for that fish. Such a site does seem useful though to middle-of-nowhere residents such as myself.
I know I'll still need a CPA after the lawyer. But I think the lawyer is a good first, as there are some complicated software licensing issues in my proposal, that could need an entire team of legal experts to decipher.
Thanks for providing this helpful community.