My mates over at J-World escaped a marauding pod of whales. They lost the boat but were rescued pretty quick. If the story isn’t enough to send a shiver down your spine, it will have you shaking if you’ve had the opportunity to read The Swarm… to be clear, this is a big boat…

Here is Wayne’s note in full and an excerpt below:

Here is what I know from the brief conversations I have had with the crew: about 10am, they came across a pod of whales. Their behavior was described as ‘erratic.’ One or more of the whales struck the boat repeatedly, and the boat began taking on water at a rapid pace. It sounds like, not surprisingly, most of the damage was around the rudder. They made an attempt to bail the boat and get a distress call out on SSB, but it was clear that the boat was a loss. They activated the EPIRB, boarded the liferaft, and the boat was reportedly gone within 7 minutes of the strike. As I understand it, the boat did not capsize in any way.

I was in contact with the the USCG from the time the EPIRB went off. They did an absolutely stellar job. Within four hours, they reported that they had safely lifted all five sailors into the helicopter and were returning to San Diego. Eugenie has a bruised hand, but there were no other injuries. I personally am in shock… this is the stuff you read about but you think will never really happen. You can make all the preparations in the world, load boat with experienced sailors, and still have unexpected consequences. A bit humbling, to be sure. We all need to remember that when we go sailing, we really go to sea in every sense.

Steve Schuckenbrock – President of Dell Large Enterprise, on Microsoft and Windows 7… (is also my boss..). I’ve been using Win 7 and Office 10 for over a month and love them both…

I was asked the other day about my view of making career choices. It’s simple, collect the best experiences and knowledge you can. That’s how you grow as a person and professionally. And the more you grow, the more you can give. And the more you can give, the more you get. Go where you can learn the most – the rest follows.

This, in many ways, parallels Mark’s comment on Facebook:

Just as people go to McKinsey & Co. because they want to go into business, or IBM Corp. to learn sales, or play for the University of Southern California if they want to go to the NFL, Zuckerberg said he wants Facebook to be the best place to learn how to build an Internet business.

“If you want to learn how to build really good products and really good practices at a company that builds stuff really quickly and have a big impact, I’d argue there’s no better place than Facebook to do that now,” Zuckerberg said.

I also like Zappos’ view from the same story:

“We now provide mentorship and training so employees can join at the entry level and over a period of five to seven years have the opportunity and training to become senior leaders in the company,” Hsieh said. “Constant growth is what will keep them in the company for a very long time.”

Zappos also does other things to keep employees satisfied, such as giving smaller promotions more often. For example, it may give three promotions over six months that add up to the equivalent of one promotion at 18 months.

Facebook doesn’t want to keep people forever. Zappos values longevity.

I use GR at least 5-6 times a day. I hate the speed and hate the folder hierarchy even more… is way to slow to delete feeds, move feeds and structure information. Scoble hits on all the other reasons not to like it. Still don’t have an alternative though.