Why would you gamble with your freedom? Most of Paul Graham's fans could easily do 3 years of lawschool at a top tier school and could then work 5 years and retire for life.
There is about to be a whole raft of federal packages for small plumbing companies; that is the real reason to get started. Apparently you don't even need a license.
Knowing even the slightest basics about Einstein's random walk, I would be somewhat surprised if the percentage difference between any arbitrarily categorized sets of days weren't that large.
You should have put it all into the highest yielding (and thus riskiest) money market accounts. The government ended up giving them the same coverage as your CDs (not that you could have known that would happen...).