We were all excited about this most recent island trip. Brian, Elliot, and I would be flying together from Tokyo directly to Halifax, and would be joined there for a few days by Todd, and then by Ben for a couple days afterwards. It was to be the first island trip with no critical imminent deadlines. We would work and do projects, but at our own pace.

Of course, if we wanted to be warm, we'd need to prioritize the woodstove. This was our most off-season trip, and temperatures were scheduled to get down into the thirties. In reality, they hit around twenty degrees.

As soon as we landed, we went to pick up the rental car. The agent apologized that they had no full-sized cars, and that we'd have to take a minivan. All of us appreciate the robust utility of such a large vehicle, so we were excited about the swap. That excitement grew when we realized that every seat was heated.

We drove away from the airport, looking up where we could buy a wood stove on the way. We got there right before it closed, but managed to completely fill the minivan with the stove and a very complicated series of stovepipes.

When I was a kid, I had flannel blankets. Blue and green, if my memory's accurate. My bedroom had big french doors to the outside that made my room cold when it was winter. Even before computers, I was a night owl. My parents would make me go to bed at ten, I'd crawl into my flannel sheets, I'd swish around to get them warm, and then I'd stare at the ceiling and think.

That was some of my favorite time. I loved going to bed and thinking until my thoughts became nonsensical and I fell asleep.

I liked to come up with ideas. That's where I had the idea to build a toaster onto the back of my bike. It's where I had the idea to make a mini-carnival in my neighborhood. It's where I had all sorts of other ideas that didn't happen. I loved coming up with ideas because anything was possible in my cozy bed, and some of those things were even possible the next day when I woke up.

Then the computer came, and I stopped thinking at night. I was still a night owl, but then I had games to play. And I was on AOL, so I had information coming in, other people's thoughts.

A couple years ago I became obsessed with the idea of buying an island. I mean, I'd always been obsessed with it, but my obsession shifted from the idea of buying the island into the action of buying it. I wasn't fantasizing about the things I'd build on the island-- I was looking up property tax rates.

When I'd pull myself away from the tax tables and go back to thinking about what it would actually be like to have an island, all of my imagined scenarios involved my friends. I wanted it to be like a summer camp that we built and enjoyed together.

So I found an island off the coast of Halifax, put in an offer, and emailed twenty of my friends, asking if they wanted to buy this island with me. Nine said yes, so we bought it.

The whole process felt familiar, like deja vu. Then it hit me-- I'd done this exact same thing before in college when I organized five friends and we bought a huge school bus together. We gutted the bus, rebuilt the interior, and traveled all around the US and even to Canada with it.

Todd and I sat on my couch in Vegas today. He was on his computer researching home automation stuff, and I was cleaning up my place, getting it ready to hibernate until I return.

I didn't expect to like Vegas so much, I told him with a smile. He agreed.

Most of my week was spent smashing out drywall in the bathroom to install a bath, doing light electrical work, and preparing my book for its release. But we still had time to play poker three times, see Francisco Domingo sing, and check out a few new restaurants in the area. And I flew to Kansas City for twenty-four hours to see my friend Roxy fight, which I include as a Vegas thing because it was facilitated by living five minutes away from the cheapest airport in the US.

I had no idea what to expect when I bought my place in Vegas. I didn't know if I'd spend most of my time there, a sliver of my time there, or just rent it out. I hadn't even seen the place or the neighborhood by the time I closed.

I throw away my change. Not all of it. Quarters of the lifeblood of laundry, and dimes have the best value to weight ratio, but I throw away all nickels and pennies.

If I'm at a store and I don't accidentally autpilot pocket my change, I'll leave the pennies and nickels on the counter. If I'm elsewhere I'll put them on a ledge or on top of a trash can where someone else will find them. But if I'm in my house and they're in my pocket, I just chuck them in the trash. I also do this for foreign currencies of similar denomination (Japanese one and five yen coins, for example).

Let's say that I use cash one hundred times per year. Half the time I'm buying something that rounds out to a dollar amount, and change doesn't factor into it. This is mostly street vendors which either don't charge tax or roll it into the price.

So fifty times per year I'm getting change. It would be interesting to think about the distribution of the "cents amount", but let's just assume that it's evenly distributed from 0 to 99 cents.

Whew! Superhuman Social Skills is Officially available!

I'd like to hype up this book and tell you how proud I am of it, and how much early readers have liked it, but instead I'll do you one better. If you're reading this on Tuesday September 29th, the book is available for free! Please download it and read it and love it.

Of the books I've written, I think this may be the one with the highest potential to impact lives. I hear all the time about how my other books have changed people's lives, so I'm especially excited to hear about the results from this one. I know firsthand just how important and wonderful it is to have good friends and to be able to get along with people effortlessly, and I'm excited for other people who are working on those things to get there a little quicker.

The book is written in short blog-like chapters, and it covers everything from starting conversations, being comfortable in social situations, making friends, being a good friend, and building your friend group. It's all stuff I do, and a lot of it has never been written about before, as far as I can tell.

Wow. Over six hundred people responded to my social skills survey and gave really thoughtful and in-depth answers. In retrospect, I really wish that I had done this survey before I had written the book. I think it would have made the outline a lot easier, and I wouldn't be making last-minute additions right before the book comes out.

But better late than never. I've skimmed all of the answers and ready many of them in detail. My main goal was to find patterns. I found some, but I was also struck by just how the diverse the set of goals, strengths, and weaknesses that we have is.

Just under 30% of people were satisfied or very satisfied with their social lives. The largest group was "Somewhat satisfied", followed closely by "Somewhat unsatisfied". That sounds about right to me. Social skills are difficult, but so important that we tend to push until we get right up to that "acceptable" level.

Before I jumped into social skills, sparked by my involvement in pickup, I think I would have answered either unsatisfied or somewhat unsatisfied, depending on how optimistic I was feeling. I was very satisfied with my friends, but not satisfied with myself. It felt like many people moved with a certain level of social ease that I couldn't understand, let alone replicate.

I woke up to a message from my friend Leo, asking if I'd heard the news about Scott. I assumed that it must be some amazing story or accomplishment, as that's the sort of thing you hear about Scott.

"He died. On Kilimanjaro."

The last I'd heard from Scott was ten days prior. Five of us have an accountability group, and in his update he was talking about his plans for the future, and his apprehension about being away from the computer for a week to climb mount Kilimanjaro.

I'm still stunned that he's gone. He was in extremely good health, was young, and wasn't a reckless risk-taker. Kilimanjaro is an extremely safe mountain, claiming just a few lives per year against the tens of thousands who climb.

As I've mentioned briefly before, I'm finishing up a book called Superhuman Social Skills. I think that this is going to be the best and most impactful book I've written, so I'm really trying to make it great. I'd like to ask for your help with that, and to give you the book for free as a thank you.

I've spent the last few days talking with three guys who are absolute experts on launching books: Noah Kagan, Charlie Hoehn, and Taylor Pearson. One thing they all stressed with me was that I should involve my readers from the beginning, and make sure that the book is tailored towards them. Ideally I would have done that before I started, but it's a bit too late for that.

I've put together a really short survey, just six questions. If you could take a few minute to answer them, it would mean a lot to me. Whether you have great social skills, poor social skills, or anywhere in the middle, your responses will help shape the book. I'll personally read every answer.

I'm also creating a Thunderclap campaign. It's a cool service that will synchronize one tweet/facebook post across everyone's accounts. So if you help me out by joining in, Thunderclap will post one message about my book to your twitter or facebook on launch day.

EDIT 9/28/15: Coinbase has now blocked me from doing this. Prior to offering it, a friend had emailed the CEO of Coinbase and got the go-ahead. A few weeks later a CSR told me that they were disabling referral bonuses for my account. I have paid out 100+ readers and will continue to pay out anyone I get a bonus for. I'm told that anyone who signed up before 9/28 will qualify. If you made your account before 9/28 and I did not pay you, please email me.

I hesitate posting stuff like this because I generally try to talk about stuff that might be useful long term, not just a quick short term boost. But I figure most readers could use a free $36.50, so it's probably worth posting. And I'll still post a real post later this week.

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The service fee is 1%, which means that you'll spend $101 to get $137.50. You can immediately cash back out to cash, or you can keep the bitcoin.

Once you buy the $100 and it arrives, send me an email and I'll send you back $37.50. Total time should be around five minutes to get some free money and support this blog.