SOLVED: Skype crashes on startup on Ubuntu 14.04

Just had a problem with Skype crashing immediately upon startup on my Ubuntu 14.04 box (as of Sept. 2, 2014).  This was an unexpected, sudden, and seemingly a random failure.

Skype would startup with the blue skype starting screen, open the contacts window for several seconds, then the window would close with no message.

Needing a message, I invoked from the command line and saw messages:

me@boxname:~/.Skype$ skype
Gtk-Message: Failed to load module "overlay-scrollbar"
Gtk-Message: Failed to load module "unity-gtk-module"
(skype:3825): Gtk-WARNING **: Unable to locate theme engine in module_path: "murrine",
(skype:3825): Gtk-WARNING **: Unable to locate theme engine in module_path: "murrine",
... bunch of these ...
(skype:3825): Gtk-WARNING **: Unable to locate theme engine in module_path: "murrine",
(skype:3825): Gtk-WARNING **: Unable to locate theme engine in module_path: "murrine",
Gtk-Message: Failed to load module "canberra-gtk-module"
Corrupt JPEG data: 3014 extraneous bytes before marker 0xd9
Aborted (core dumped)
me@boxname:~$

Found this set of directions: 

http://community.skype.com/t5/Linux/Skype-is-crashing-with-Corrupt-JPEG-data/td-p/3455587

Worked perfectly.

me@boxname:~$  cd
me@boxname:~$ tar -czf my.dot.skype.dir.tgz ~/.Skype
me@boxname:~$ sqlite3 ~/.Skype/my.profile.name/main.db
SQLite version 3.8.2 2013-12-06 14:53:30
Enter ".help" for instructions
Enter SQL statements terminated with a ";"
sqlite> select * from Messages where type = 68;
... bunch of crap here ...
sqlite> select count(*) from Messages where type = 68;
25
sqlite> quit
me@boxname:~$ skype
... same error messages as above, without the last one about 'Aborted (core dumped)'.
 Success!