No really, its actually another day... Well, I wrote this 12 hours after I posted the last MoHM, but you won't get it until tomorrow. I'm still pretty motivated to work on Hack Mars. In fact, I'm just rearing to go. I'm going to switch up my sleep schedule so that I can work all night tonight on 4 hours of sleep. That way I can hopefully skip one four hour sleep per four. That would become 12 hours of sleep per 2 days or 6 hours per night. But I will sleep 3 times, so I plan on no loss in quality of work. Have you ever tried it? Skipping any sleep? The main thing is to go to sleep when you are tired. Don't go to sleep because it's 3 AM. When your eyes start to hurt, you can keep on until you find a good place to stop. Sleep when you find yourself having problems with vision or other dull ache or pain. But don't sleep long. Set your alarm and stick to it. If you are motivated, you'll wake up no matter how many hours. And if you can trick yourself into thinking that you're getting enough sleep, you can be more productive by skipping some sleep. I've only done it a few quarters (mostly college), but it works well. But DO NOT skip sleep for work that you don't like. That's funny, right? Well, I want to warn you that skipping sleep for bad reasons is silly. You can always get work done. You have 80 hours easy per week. That's not the problem. Not having enough time is caused by something. Debug your life and see why you aren't using your time correctly. If you complain about missing sleep for lame work, I have no sympathy. Skipping sleep is for people who have a mission, not a 5 year plan.

Skip onto the next paragraph if you came here for a rant on quality of work. Yesterday I gave you a picture that looked like a bunch of pickup sticks on a grey background. I said that it was a bug. Now I can show you what it should have looked like. My debugging method led me straight as an arrow to this wonderful solution.


You may remember a movie where this young guy is talking with his girlfriend's father. He says something like, "I don't want to buy or sell anything processed or process anything bought or sold. But for now, I would like to try to date your daughter." This is funny and gets a laugh from my parents and they quote it whenever I explain any of my boycotts or decisions in life. They take my decisions as one big joke. I'm a rebel without a cause, really. An anarchist who's fighting a not so benevolent military dictatorship. To them it's some kind of a crime that I don't get a normal day job. What crime have I committed being born in a society that I don't agree with? Not agreeing with others is a crime? I imagine they'd say the same thing if this were Soviet Russia and the day jobs worked you. "You don't like it? Move to Fascist Amer-ika," they would tell me.

Well, perhaps another example would suffice. Say that you have one moral that is stronger than the blood that holds you together. Say that moral is stealing. You wouldn't steal water if your hair was on fire. So you grow up in a society that forces you to steal in order to eat. Would you steal bread if you were starving? Would you murder a person in cold blood for their wallet? What would you do to make ends meet? I'm not willing to break my morals to eat. I will not contribute to the destruction of society just for my own benefit.

Ayn Rand wrote in two of her books (Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged) that she and her characters were willing to allow people to starve even if they had some ability to feed them. Her morals stated that she be free to create anything in her means to create and to sell to anyone at any price she wished. This is the free market she speaks of. If you wish to criticize me, first find an argument that works against Ayn Rand's Objectivism.

What is wrong with her objectivism? I'll start with my own. I would say that she creates innocent victims by sticking to her morals. Ignorance may not be an excuse, but that doesn't excuse indirect murder. It's always an engineer's duty to do his or her best to make things work. If the government steals your goods at gunpoint, by golly buy a gang and start a shooting war, but don't dare murder the people who rely on you and your goods. Those people aren't stealing your goods and would gladly help you overthrow the tyrranical government.

The difference between Atlas Shrugged and my own insurrection is that John Galt et. al. took day jobs but reserved their minds for themselves so that society would not benefit from them. I believe that the destruction of society could be advanced by my working a day job, so I won't do that either. I would happy to work a job that would allow me to use my talents to assist the betterment of society, but I've been turned down for quite a few. "Harsh reality is the case, like when you spit into the wind, it might come back in your face."

So I have one last thing to say: We all must watch the fall of civilization, but we don't all have to participate in it.