Ahhhh, the weekend. The perfect time to solve my laptop performance issues as I have, in theory, 48 hours + of uninterrupted problem-solving time on my hands. If only my husband and children saw it this way and understood that my personal life exists by the grace of my professional life and the whims of my laptop.

Lately my laptop has been crashing pretty regularly. I have the technical skills of a worm so my solution is to turn it off and start it up again. Amazingly this works and I feel pretty good that I have been able to find a way to continue working at midnight in the middle of the week. Of course, this is a crappy solution and doesn’t solve my problem. I’m no dummy but the real proof that this is supremely stoopid (yes, I intentionally misspelled this word) is that when I tell this story to people in the know, they look at me in horror and mentally adjust their opinion of me…it’s apparently impossible to hide their shame at knowing me as they implore me with their eyes to never tell this story in front of other intelligent beings. Not that I’m insulting any of you…I just want to get my message out.

In my search to solve my problem, I realized that I hadn’t made a backup in awhile. To avoid permanent damage (to my reputation), I decide to make a backup on my external hard drive. What happens? I CAN’T! I get an error 0x81000037. Sounds intimidating so I decide to search via Google for more information. Lo and behold I find a forum with a Microsoft Support Moderator. This sounds official and I think, ‘great, I can follow the step-by-step instructions’. The solutions begins: ‘If the reparse point points to a location that contains any compressed file format…’ Oooook. WTF? What is a reparse point? I understood the ‘if the’ part and then they lost me.

As you can see Fouzan has 5 (!) medals so he must be good. I’m sure in circles where reparse points are part of the repartee, he is the life of the party. I, however, will not be giving him a medal. I don’t have time as I will be taking a self-learning crash course, “Reparse Points: Your BFF” or perhaps, “Putting the Fun Back into Your Weekend with Microsoft!” If only I was making this up.

Talk to me in my language!!!!!! Please!!!!!! You can choose English or Dutch but not Technical. I don’t do Technical. It is way too hard to learn and I don’t get paid enough for the stress. Where are the normal people who understand my pain and can help me beyond the ‘if the’ part? I need a non-technical, technical forum to help me wade through the Microsoft swamp. It would sure be nice if Microsoft recognized that some people who use computers don’t bring a wealth of reparse points to the table (note how I can carelessly use ‘ reparse points’ to mean anything, since it means absolutely nothing to me!).

Well, this is it for now. If my laptop still works later, perhaps I’ll update you on my progress. Maybe someone will give me a medal for my performance in my self-learning class. Perhaps I’ll become a Microsoft Support Moderator and then I can write about Reparse Points and other such things to let everyone know how smart I am. In reality, I will most likely call someone who knows about my challenge with computers. I’m always worried I will do the wrong thing.

On the other hand, it’s Sunday. Maybe I’ll just turn my laptop off and then back on again… Backups are for wusses! I’m an Aries and I live for adventure! Problem solved till tomorrow. Whatever you do, don’t tell anyone who knows me about this. I have a reputation to protect.