I got rear ended yesterday while waiting at a light. The picture above tells the story. Both cars were able to drive away and I’ll need to at least get my rear bumper replaced. If you click on the image you can kind of see that the Camry’s hood is crumpled. No injuries and thank goodness for the head rest.

I think I may have killed my beloved VAIO laptop (seen at right). Yesterday afternoon I tried adding a external monitor to extend my desktop, but after rebooting neither the laptop monitor nor the external monitor would work. After spending a good part of the day futzing with it, I have come to the conclusion that I somehow damaged the graphics card.

Because the VAIO was my main work and production machine it has caused me a great deal of stress. Luckily I had a good backup of the hard drive and it should be salvageable anyway. Today I am installing my work software on a desktop we had in another room and trying to get my operation back online as quickly as possible. I should be completely back in action by tomorrow.

Because copying files and installing software consists of hitting a few buttons and watching progress bars, it has felt like a free day. I’ve made the best of it by streaming Netflix in the background as I work.

But will it make you happy? — New research shows money spent on experiences brings more happiness than money spent on belongings.

City of fear – Using cell phones, an organized prison gang launched an attack that shut down Brazil’s largest city last May.

Monopoly killer — Germans are addicted to board games and the Settlers of Catan is said to be the perfect game.

The boy who cried Cal — Kevin Hart deceived coaches, friends and family into believing he was headed to play Division I football.

The most useful thing I read today:

“Our philosophy has been that most of the money we might ordinarily have spent on advertising should be invested in customer service, so that our customers will do the marketing for us through word of mouth.”

– Tony Hsieh, Zappos CEO in Harvard Business Review

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