Movie Review - Keeping Up with the Joneses

Disable Activity Notifications on Apple Watch

How to Completely Disable All the Activity Notifications 

on Your Apple Watch

By default, your Apple Watch will remind you to stand, notify you of your goal completions and achievements, and give you a weekly summary of your activity. Tired of seeing all these notifications? No worries. They’re easy to disable.

Now, the Activity app on the Apple Watch can be useful. I sometimes like knowing how many steps I’ve taken in a day, but I want to check on that myself and not get a notification on my progress, or lack thereof. I also prefer not to get reminded to stand in the middle of my work. So, I disabled the activity notifications on my watch and I thought I had disabled all of them, but I was still getting Progress Updates. I finally figured out which setting I had missed. If you don’t want to use your Apple Watch as a fitness tracker, or you just don’t want to be bothered by all the notifications, I’ll show you how to completely disable all the activity notifications on your Apple Watch.

To completely silence activity notifications, tap the Watch app icon on the Home screen on your iPhone.

Make sure the “My Watch” screen is active. The My Watch icon at the bottom of the screen should be orange.

Scroll down on the My Watch screen and tap “Activity”.

If you only want to turn off the reminders for the day, tap the “Mute Reminders for Today” slider button. However, to disable all activity notifications, let’s make our way down the screen. Tap the slider button for “Stand Reminders” to prevent reminders from displaying on your watch telling you to stand (slider buttons should be black and white when they’re off on this screen).

The setting I missed initially is “Progress Updates”. Notice it says “Every 4 hours”. Tap the setting to change it.

On the Progress Updates screen, tap “None” to turn off the updates. Then, tap “Activity” in the upper-left corner of the screen to return to the Activity screen.

To avoid receiving notifications when you reach your daily Move, Exercise, and Stand goals, tap the “Goal Completions” slider button to turn it off. Tap the Achievements slider button to avoid getting notifications when you reach a milestone or personal best. Finally, tap the “Weekly Summary” slider button to turn off that notification.

Now, you won’t be bothered by any activity notifications. Let’s not get lazy, though, huh?

Inseparable

Inseparable

By Touching Lives 

“Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword?” Romans 8:35

There is insecurity everywhere. We are facing massive financial deficits, worldwide terrorism, rouge nations developing nuclear weapons, and not to mention racial unrest, cultural upheaval, and social tensions across the globe. In the midst of it all and at the height of it all there is one thing guaranteed. God’s loving arms will be wrapped around us and will never let us go. The light of His love will never grow dark and the fire of His love will never go out. The ocean of His love will never dry up.

He loves us so much that not only is He with us through thick or thin, and not only does He walk with us through every trouble we face; but He also guarantees ultimate, absolute, victory. “No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us” Romans 8:37.

Followers of Jesus are never guaranteed immunity to temptation, tribulation, tragedy, or trouble. What we are guaranteed is the love of God. No hardship or circumstance can separate us from His love. No shortcoming, mistake, or even outright disobedience can separate us from His love. That is grace. Not because we deserve His love, but because He has chosen to lavish it upon us. This is why we are more than conquerors. We can rise above our circumstances because we have an eternal view towards heaven. Whatever comes our way, we have the love of our Heavenly Father.

Father, Thank You for loving me, forgiving me, and saving me. In Jesus’ Name, Amen.

Remove Toolbars & Adware

How to Remove Toolbars and Adware with AdwCleaner

Once upon a time, there was a dumb person named Justin, who installed Java even though it’s awful. Even worse, this fool clicked “Next” without disabling the bundled offers.

Okay, okay, that dumb person was me.



Thanks to my stupidity, Yahoo now shows up as a search engine, and no one wants that. This wasn’t a one-time incident, either–other programs have made other annoying changes to my PC, adding things like toolbars and even extra ads in my browser.

Ideally, the solution is to avoiding junk programs in the first place. But if it’s too late, you don’t necessarily need to reinstall Windows from scratch–AdwCleaner can help. This free application removes the annoying crap that’s bundled with installers. But, while it looks incredibly simple, there are a few tricks to using it right.

Warning: AdwCleaner is designed to remove crap from your system, but as with all things, make sure you back up your computer and create a System Restore point before continuing. That way, if you delete something you wanted to keep or mess up your computer, you can roll back to the way things were.

Step One: Download AdwCleaner

Head to the download page for AdwCleaner at Toolslib.net, the official home of this application. Do not just Google AdwCleaner and install from wherever, because scammers are offering a fake version to trick people.

You’ll find the program in your Downloads folder.



This is a portable application, meaning there’s no installer. You can move the program anywhere you like, including your Documents folder or even your Desktop. Just remember where you put it.

Double-click the application to run it. You’ll be asked about permissions.



Click “Yes” and you’re ready to rock.

Step Two: Scan Your Computer With AdwCleaner

AdwCleaner’s main interface offers three prominent buttons: Scan, Clean, and Logfile.



Click “Scan” to start looking for junk. The software will start looking for potentially problematic programs.



After a few minutes, you’ll see a list of results.



AdwCleaner points out four kinds of malware, spread out across a few different tabs (in my case, “Folders” and “Registry”. It will attempt to include:

• Adware, which you really don’t want.
• Potentially undesirable software, which you might want but probably don’t.
• Toolbars, which you probably don’t want.
• Hijackers, which do things like change your default home page. You don’t want these either.

Knowing this, you can read through the list, spotting anything you might actually want to keep. (AdwCleaner has been known to include some things you may want, like benign browser settings or Chrome extensions.) Be sure to uncheck anything you don’t want removed. If you ever aren’t sure, google the name of the file, or check it against the Should I Remove It database. If the folder has a gibberish name (like many Chrome extensions), you can navigate to the folder yourself and see what program or extension it may be associated with.

For example, on another system, AdwCleaner found a Chrome extension that it marked as potentially unwanted–but it was something I installed myself. Had I not investigated and unchecked that option, AdwCleaner would have removed it.

Repeat this process for the other tabs in AdwCleaner’s interface–which can include Registry keys, browser settings and extensions, shortcuts, services, and more. Again, be careful not to delete anything you actually want.



When everything is checked and ready to go, continue to the next step.

Step Three: Clean It Up

There are two ways to continue from this point.

First, and most obviously, you can click the “Clean” button to automatically remove every checked item. You’ll be warned about closing affected software.



After the cleaning process is complete, you’ll be asked to restart your computer. Make sure you close your other programs before this happens.

Alternatively, you can click the “Logfile” button. This will give you a text file detailing where all the problematic files and registry keys are. That way, you can go find the problematic files using Windows Explorer and delete them yourself. If you know how to edit the registry, you can manually delete those unwanted registry keys as well.



This is a bit more complex than just clicking “Clean”, but ensures you investigate each problem before removing it, which is good if you want to be extra thorough.

If you opt for the manual method, make sure you close your browser and other affected programs before trying to delete anything. Run the scan again when you’re done, just to make sure it’s all really gone.

With any luck, your computer will be spick and span once again.

ASLR, Does It Keep Your Comp Secure?

What Is ASLR, and How Does It Keep Your Computer Secure?

Address Space Layout Randomization (ASLR) is a security technique used in operating systems, first implemented in 2001. The current versions of all major operating systems (iOS, Android, Windows, macOS, and Linux) feature ASLR protection. But in the past week, a new method of bypassing ASLR has been found. So, should you be worried?

To those without a low-level programming background, ASLR can be confusing. To understand it, you must first understand virtual memory.

What Is Virtual Memory?

Virtual Memory is a memory management technique with many benefits, but it was primarily created to make programming easier. Imagine you have Google Chrome, Microsoft Word, and several other programs open on a computer with 4 GB of RAM. As a whole, the programs on this computer use much more than 4 GB of RAM.  However, not all the programs will be active at all times, or need simultaneous access to that RAM.

The operating system allocates chunks of memory to programs called pages. If there is not enough RAM to store all the pages at once, the pages least likely to be needed are stored on the slower (but more spacious) hard drive. When the stored pages are needed, they’ll switch spaces with less necessary pages currently in RAM. This process is called paging, and lends its name to the pagefile.sys file on Windows.

Virtual memory makes it easier for programs to manage their own memory, and also makes them more secure. Programs don’t need to worry about where other programs are storing data, or how much RAM is left. They can just ask the operating system for additional memory (or return unused memory) as necessary. All the program sees is a single continuous chunk of memory addresses for its exclusive use, called virtual addresses. The program is not allowed to look at another program’s memory.

When a program needs to access memory, it gives the operating system a virtual address. The operating system contacts the CPU’s memory management unit (MMU). The MMU translates between virtual and physical addresses, returning that information to the operating system. At no point does the program directly interact with RAM.

What Is ASLR?

Address Space Layout Randomization (ASLR) is primarily used to protect against buffer overflow attacks. In a buffer overflow, attackers feed a function as much junk data as it can handle, followed by a malicious payload. The payload will overwrite data the program intends to access. Instructions to jump to another point in code are a common payload. The famous JailbreakMe method of jailbreaking iOS 4, for example, used a buffer overflow attack, prompting Apple to add ASLR to iOS 4.3.

Buffer overflows require an attacker to know where each part of the program is located in memory. Figuring this out is usually a difficult process of trial and error. After determining that, they must craft a payload and find a suitable place to inject it. If the attacker does not know where their target code is located, it can be difficult or impossible to exploit it.

ASLR works alongside virtual memory management to randomize the locations of different parts of the program in memory. Every time the program is run, components (including the stack, heap, and libraries) are moved to a different address in virtual memory. Attackers can no longer learn where their target is through trial and error, because the address will be different every time. Generally, applications need to be compiled with ASLR support, but this is becoming the default, and is even required on Android 5.0 and later.

So Does ASLR Still Protect You?

Last Tuesday, researchers from SUNY Binghamton and University of California, Riverside, presented a paper called Jump Over ASLR: Attacking Branch Predictors to Bypass ASLR. The paper details a way to attack the Branch Target Buffer (BTB). The BTB is part of the processor that speeds up if statements by predicting the outcome. Using the authors’ method, it is possible to determine locations of known branch instructions in a running program. The attack in question was performed on a Linux machine with an Intel Haswell processor (first released in 2013), but could likely be applied to any modern operating system and processor.

That said, you shouldn’t necessarily despair. The paper offered a few ways that hardware and operating system developers can mitigate this threat. Newer, fine-grain ASLR techniques would require more effort from the attacker, and increasing the amount of entropy (randomness) can make the Jump Over attack infeasible. Most likely, newer operating systems and processors will be immune to this attack.

So what is left for you to do? The Jump Over bypass is new, and hasn’t yet been spotted in the wild. When attackers exploit it, the flaw will increase the potential damage an attacker can cause on your device. This level of access isn’t unprecedented; Microsoft and Apple only implemented ASLR in their operating systems released 2007 and later. Even if this style of attack becomes commonplace, you won’t be any worse off than you were back in the days of Windows XP.

Keep in mind that attackers still have to get their code on your device to do any harm. This flaw does not provide them with any additional ways to infect you. As always, you should follow security best practices. Use antivirus, stay away from sketchy websites and programs, and keep your software up to date. By following these steps and keeping malicious actors off your computer, you’ll be as safe as you’ve ever been.

Only Jesus

Only Jesus

By Touching Lives 

“For in Christ all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through Him to reconcile to Himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of His cross.” Colossians 1:19-20

The biggest obstacle to anyone that says all paths lead to God and all religions are the same is a person named Jesus. No other founder of any faith has ever claimed to be who Jesus claimed to be or claimed to do what Jesus said He came to do. Jesus is the only one who claimed to be the Son of God and claimed to be God in the flesh. He is the only founder of any faith who accepted the worship of His followers. He is the only One who claimed that He died, not for Himself, but for the sins of the whole world.

Neither Mohammed, Buddha, Krishna, nor any other spiritual leader has ever died for anyone except himself. Not one has claimed to have lived a perfect, sinless life except for Jesus Christ. None except Jesus has performed miracles like healing the sick and raising the dead. Only Jesus claimed to be both God and man. If you had gone to Buddha and asked, “Are you the son of Brahma?” He would have said, “My son, you are still in the veil of allusion.” If you had gone to Socrates and said, “Are you the son of Zeus?” he would have laughed at you. If you had gone to Mohammed and asked, “Are you Allah?” he would have torn his clothes and cut off your head.

Christianity alone is centered on a person. Every other religion is based on the teaching of its founder and who he claimed God to be, but never on the founder himself. Christianity is based on Jesus – His acts and who He claimed to be. This is why Christians simply cannot agree that all religions teach the same thing. If that is true, then Jesus is liar: “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.” (John 14:6). And the Apostle Paul is a liar: “For there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Jesus Christ.” (1 Timothy 2:5).

Simply put, if what Jesus said is true then every other religion is false. But if even one other religion is true then what Jesus claimed has to be false. It cannot be both. And the most loving thing any of us can do is to present this truth to others and ask them to decide what they believe about Jesus. 

Todays HaHa

Trivia

The Modern Celebration Of Halloween Was Heavily Influenced By The Festival Of?

Samhain	Devil's Night
El Día de Muertos	Pitru Paksha

Answer: Samhain

Once upon a time, Halloween wasn’t Halloween as we know it, but a much older festival known as Samhain. This festival, marking the end of the harvest season (and the beginning of winter) in Gaelic culture, was celebrated in ancient times between sunset on October 31st to sunset on November 1st–placing it roughly between the autumn equinox and the winter solstice.

In Irish mythology, the festival marked a liminal time where the barrier between the world of the living and the world of the dead grew thin and spirits could enter our world. There were feasts and offerings to help appease the spirits (as well as celebrate the bounty of the fall harvest) and a great deal of superstition and preparation was invested in warding off evil. Celebrants would often wear costumes as a way of imitating, and disguising oneself from, the Aos Si (spirits or fairies) while going door-to-door, reciting verses in exchange for small tokens of food.

Another tradition that will sound all too familiar is the tradition of carving turnips (and later pumpkins) into grotesque faces and then hollowing them out into lanterns to represent spirits and supernatural beings or scare away evil spirits. The practice spread to England where they became known as jack-o’-lanterns.

Did You Know/Todays Term

Did You Know?

Puya raimondii, also known as queen of the Andes, is an enormous flowering plant found high in the Andes mountains in Bolivia and Peru–the plant, featuring a single flowering spike that can grow up to 29-32 feet tall, takes around 40 years to reach maturity and only blooms once before dying (producing approximately three thousand flowers and six million seeds).

Today's Tech Term 

Spaghetti Code

Spaghetti Code is a term used to refer to program code that has been written without any type of coherent structure to it.

Logic and control within Spaghetti Code jumps all over the place or moves from routine to routine without returning to a base point, making it hard to follow (i.e. a lot of GOTO statements).

Weekend Box Office Results

'Inferno' Has a Meltdown, 'Madea' is #1 Again & 'Doctor Strange' Opens with $86M Overseas by Brad Brevet Sony's Inferno experienced an opening weekend meltdown as the third film in the Robert Langdon series fell $10 million shy of expectations. As a result, and thanks to a strong second weekend hold, Tyler Perry's Boo! A Madea Halloween scored a second weekend atop the box office, dropping just 41% from its opening weekend. Meanwhile, Disney and Marvel's Doctor Strange stormed the international box office. The latest entry in the Marvel Cinematic Universe opened in approximately half the overseas markets where it brought in an estimated $86 million ahead of its domestic release next weekend. With an estimated $16.67 million Boo! A Madea Halloween took the #1 spot at the weekend box office domestically for a second week in a row. The film's cume has now grown to $52 million as it fell just 41% in its second weekend, a spectacular performance following the film's $28.5 million opening last weekend. As noted in our weekend preview, Tyler Perry's Madea's Witness Protection and Madea's Big Happy Family opened over $25 million and fell around 60% in their second weekends. Additionally, Perry's 2013 holiday feature A Madea Christmas dropped 48% in its second weekend, all to suggest Madea's Halloween would drop around 55% or so, especially given the large opening weekend. Audience enthusiasm for the film, however, held on strong, proving that "A" CinemaScore was no fluke. Therefore, it's a second place finish for the dismal opening weekend for Sony's Inferno. With an estimated $15 million from 3,576 theaters,Inferno's opening weekend was 67.5% off the $46.2 million opening for 2009's Angels & Demons and a far cry from The Da Vinci Code's $77 million opening ten years ago. It will be interesting to see where this one ends up finishing as opening day audiences gave the film a "B+" CinemaScore. At this point it could truly flame out and struggle to reach $40 million. The seven year gap in release dates between Inferno and Angels & Demons proves the decline in sales from the first film to the second didn't go unnoticed by the studio. As a result, Inferno was made for a reported $75 million, half the cost of Angels & Demons. As a result, Sony isn't looking at a complete blood bath on the balance sheet, but it isn't exactly pretty. Helping ease the pain, the film has already grossed an estimated $132.7 million internationally, including a $13.3 million debut in China this weekend. There's also the ancillary market where the studio now has a box set trilogy to sell in the future. Of note, however, is how much director Ron Howard has been struggling as of late with the lackluster results of Rush in 2013, In the Heart of the Sea in 2015 and now Inferno. Most recently Howard was attached to direct a Zelda Fitzgerald biopic with Jennifer Lawrence in the starring role, which could be just what the director needs to get back on track. Moving on, Paramount's Jack Reacher: Never Go Back fell to third position in its second weekend, delivering an estimated $9.55 million for a 58.2% second weekend drop as the film appears to be fading relatively fast. The Accountant, however, held on well yet again, dropping 38% in its third weekend with an estimated $8.47 million as its cume now climbs to $61.2 million. Rounding out the top five is the only wide release horror film in theaters, Universal's Ouija: Origin of Evil, which dipped 50% in its second weekend with an estimated $7 million. The film's cume now stands at $24.6 million. Elsewhere in the top ten Fox's Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children is now just shy of $80 million after taking in an estimated $3.97 million in its fifth weekend and FIP's Ae Dil Hai Mushkil delivered a strong $2.1 million from just 302 theaters ($7,070 PTA) for a tenth place finish. The per theater champ for a second weekend in a row is A24's Moonlight, which expanded in to 36 theaters this weekend (+32) and brought in an estimated $900,826 ($25,023 PTA). The film will continue to expand into the top 25 markets next weekend. In limited release China Lion's release of Mr. Donkey delivered an estimated $81,350 from 20 theaters ($4,068 PTA); Magnolia's Gimme Danger brought in $44k from three theaters ($14,675 PTA); A24's Oasis: Supersonic brought in $16,559 from 14 theaters after its debut on Wednesday; and Bow and Arrow's Shangri-La Suite delivered $13,344 from 25 theaters ($534 PTA). Overall, the top twelve delivered $77 million this weekend, down 32% compared to last weekend. The result is, however, a 23% improvement over the same weekend last year, though one caveat is the fact this weekend last year marked 2015's worst weekend at the domestic box office. International highlights start with the release of Disney and Marvel's Doctor Strange, which delivered an estimated $86 million in its international debut in 33 territories, comprising 45% of the international marketplace. Compared to previous openings in the Marvel Cinematic Universe this opening is +49% ahead of Ant-Man, +37% ahead of Guardians of the Galaxy, +23% ahead of Captain America: Winter Soldier and +1% ahead of Thor: The Dark World when comparing the same suite of territories and all at today's exchange rates. Top territories include South Korea ($18.1m), UK ($11.1m), France ($5.7m), Australia ($4.9m), Germany ($4.8m), Mexico ($4.6m), Taiwan ($4.3m), Hong Kong ($3.2m), Indonesia ($3.1m), Philippines ($2.7m), Italy ($2.5m), Thailand ($2.5m), Russia ($2.5m), Malaysia ($2.4m), Singapore ($2.2m) and Spain ($2.2m). Doctor Strange will debut domestically next weekend in ~3,800 theaters as well has hit theaters in Russia, Brazil, China, Colombia and several other overseas markets. In other international news, Illumination and Universal's The Secret Life of Pets hit a milestone this past week crossing $500 million internationally. After an estimated $1.6 million overseas this weekend the film's global cume now stands at $867 million placing it 49th on the all-time worldwide chart as it just passed The Hunger Games: Catching Fire. As already mentioned, next weekend sees the release of Doctor Strange in ~3,800 theaters. Additional wide releases include Fox's Trolls in nearly 4,000 theaters and Lionsgate will debut Mel Gibson's Hacksaw Ridge in ~2,700 theaters. Focus will be releasing the drama Loving in four theaters. October 28-30, 2016 Weekend TW LW Title (click to view) Studio Weekend Gross % Change Theater Count /Change Average Total Gross Budget* Week # 1 1 Boo! A Madea Halloween LGF $16,675,000 -41.5% 2,299 +39 $7,253 $52,019,343 $20 2 2 N Inferno Sony $15,000,000 - 3,576 - $4,195 $15,000,000 $75 1 3 2 Jack Reacher: Never Go Back Par. $9,550,000 -58.2% 3,780 - $2,526 $39,679,177 $60 2 4 4 The Accountant WB $8,475,000 -37.9% 3,402 +70 $2,491 $61,257,172 $44 3 5 3 Ouija: Origin of Evil Uni. $7,070,000 -49.7% 3,168 +1 $2,232 $24,638,625 $9 2 6 5 The Girl on the Train (2016) Uni. $4,270,000 -40.4% 2,758 -333 $1,548 $65,918,480 $45 4 7 6 Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children Fox $3,975,000 -32.6% 2,797 -336 $1,421 $79,879,180 $110 5 8 7 Keeping Up with the Joneses Fox $3,375,000 -38.2% 3,022 - $1,117 $10,779,313 - 2 9 9 Storks WB $2,785,000 -30.4% 1,901 -244 $1,465 $68,244,612 $70 6 10 N Ae Dil Hai Mushkil FIP $2,135,000 - 302 - $7,070 $2,135,000 - 1

NFL Standings Week 8

Mon Inspiration

Morning Inspiration with Pastor Merritt

In Genesis, the first book of the Old Testament, we are told that a young man named Joseph was thrown into prison, but God miraculously delivered him out of that prison and made him the Prime Minister of Egypt. Yet in Matthew, the first book in the New Testament, John the Baptist was thrown into prison and part of him was delivered…his head was delivered on a silver platter. Why is it that God will deliver this person, but not that one? Why does God heal this person, but lets this person die?

Therein lies a great lesson that we must all remember or else this problem really will drive you to jump off a cliff. God’s principles and promises are the same for every believer, but His plans and purposes may be entirely different.

God wants to do the same thing with every one of us. He wants to grow our maturity, strengthen our faith, increase our trust and make us more like Jesus Christ. Some of us will do that in good health and some of us will do that battling illness. Some of us will do that in prosperity and some of us will do that in adversity. Remember this, God is obligated by His own character to get everyone of us to the same destination, but He is not obligated to get us there the same way.

Paul Wasn't a Zombie

Why Paul Wasn't a Zombie

Why Paul Wasn't a Zombie
by John UpChurch, Crosswalk.com Contributor

“We proclaim him, admonishing and teaching everyone with all wisdom, so that we may present everyone perfect in Christ. To this end I labor, struggling with all his energy, which so powerfully works in me.” Colossians 1:28-29 

Worn out. Exhausted. Please oh please oh please be Friday. Those words probably describe many of our weeks—often by Monday afternoon. The surge of the weekday tide sucks us under and spins us around and strips away our energy by making us swim to the surface over and over again. Gasp. Bills. Gasp. Long meeting. Gasp. Kids biting each other.

What more can we give than that? What else can God expect from us than just trying to keep from drowning in the mess of life?

Paul says everything and more. Yep, you read that right. We’re supposed to slap down every last ounce of ourselves to the cause of Christ. We’re supposed to surrender every modicum of ourselves to the purpose of “proclaiming Him” with our joy-filled words and our peace-in-the-midst-of-this-hurricane-called-life actions.

Everything. Every single bit. For Him.

Feeling tired yet? I hope you don’t. You see, there’s something in here that we too often overlook. It does take energy—loads of it—to live a life of surrender. We wouldn’t expect anything less from being a living sacrifice (Romans 12:1). That means using all that we are to make all that He is known to all. But even with all those alls, you won’t be using up your energy.

Look again at what Paul says here: “To this end I labor, struggling with all his energy, which so powerfully works in me.” He doesn’t say, “I did it all myself until I burned out and crashed into the dirt and hated my life and decided it was just too hard to do anything and wanted to move to Alaska forever and hide in a cave.” Instead, he tells us that the source of his oomph is Christ.

Christ didn’t save us so that we could barely keep going, dragging our way like zombies down the road of life. Instead, we’re operating with power—His. He jumpstarted our lives with a spirit of power (2 Timothy 1:7), cranking up the juice through the Holy Spirit (Acts 1:8). After all, like Paul, we’re wrestling with the tasks God’s called us to do. We aren’t supposed to do this by tapping into our own reserves. God takes these fragile clay pots that we are and supplies His power so that He gets the glory (2 Corinthians 4:7). He adds the zing, and His zing is potent.

Intersecting Faith & Life: When you try to make it all work on your own guts and grit, you’ll eventually drain down and sputter out. Instead, take Him up on His “by my Spirit” (Zechariah 4:6) thing—that is, not your own strength. That doesn’t mean you’ll never get tired or weary. You will. But you can be sure that He specializes in renewing the worn out and exhausted (Isaiah 40:30-31).

For Further Reading 

Isaiah 40

Outlook PST Data Files

Where Are My Outlook PST Data Files, and How Can I Move Them Somewhere Else?

Most people know that Outlook stores email for each account in a personal table storage (PST) file, but figuring out where that file is located depends on what version of Outlook you’re using. Here’s where Outlook stores your files and how you can move them if you need to.

Outlook is still one of the best desktop email clients for Windows and is the de facto client in most businesses that use a Microsoft Exchange email server. Outlook also works well for personal use. It always provided good support for regular POP3 and IMAP accounts, but has also made a lot of progress in recent years at playing well with email services like Gmail andOutlook.com. It also provides a solid calendar and reminder system that are well integrated. Most of the time, you won’t need to bother with where your Outlook data files are located. But if you want to ensure the files are getting backed up or you want to move them to another hard drive to save space, here’s how to find and work with them.

What Is a PST file?

If you’ve used Outlook for any length of time, you’ve likely heard of PST files. Each email account you set up in Outlook gets its own database in the form of a personal storage table (PST) file, where emails, calendar items, contacts, and reminders are all stored. The data in a PST file may or may not be compressed and encrypted, depending on your settings.You may notice that Outlook slows down as more data is stored in your PST file. Occasionally, Outlook will offer to archive your old emails to help alleviate this problem and just so that you have fewer old items to wade through as you go about your day.

You may also notice files with an .ost extension in your Outlook data folder. OST files are the same format as PST, but are generally used as temporary offline storage of email for Exchange servers and for webmail hosts such as Gmail and Outlook.com. The idea is that you can still interact with the messages stored in the OST file when you are disconnected from the email server–such as when you have no internet–and then when you reconnect to the server again, Outloook syncs everything up.

This means your data will be stored in a PST file if you’re using a standard POP3 or IMAP account, or an Exchange account where offline storage is not configured. Gmail, Outlook.com, and other webmail hosts will get an OST file instead. Exchange accounts may even use both an OST file for offline access and a PST file for data backup.

Where Are My PST and OST Files Saved?

Where Outlook saves your data files depends on the version of Outlook you’re running. By default, Outlook 2007 and 2010 store PST files in your AppData folder at the following location:

C:\users\username\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Outlook

Outlook also stores all OST files in that same AppData location, regardless of what Outlook version you’re running.

Starting with Outlook 2013, the location of PST files moved to the Documents folder. Outlook 2013 and 2016 now store PST files at the following location:

C:\users\username\Documents\Outlook Files

You can also find out exactly where the PST file for an email account is stored from within Outlook. In Outlook 2010, 2013, and 2016, click the “File” menu, choose the “Account Settings” dropdown menu, and then click “Account Settings.” In Outlook 2007, you’ll find the “Account Settings” option on the “Tools” menu.

In the “Account Settings” window, on the “Data Files” tab, select the account you want to investigate and then click the “Open File Location” button.

Outlook will open a File Explorer window showing the folder containing your PST file (or OST file if you selected an account that uses one).

How Can I Move My PST File?

If you’d like to move your Outlook files off your primary hard drive, or just place your Outlook files in a more manageable location, there is a way. However, you can’t simply move them to a new location using File Explorer. If you try, Outlook will just create a new PST file in its default location and you may lose access to some of what’s stored in your real PST. Instead, you’ll need to dive briefly into the Windows Registry to change the default location where Outlook stores data files, and then move your existing PST file in File Explorer.

Standard warning: Registry Editor is a powerful tool and misusing it can render your system unstable or even inoperable. This is a pretty simple hack and as long as you stick to the instructions, you shouldn’t have any problems. That said, if you’ve never worked with it before, consider reading about how to use the Registry Editor before you get started. And definitely back up the Registry (and your computer!) before making changes.

Start by making sure that Outlook is not running. Then, open the Registry Editor by hitting Start and typing “regedit.” Press Enter to open Registry Editor and give it permission to make changes to your PC.

In the Registry Editor, use the left sidebar to navigate one of the following keys, depending on what version of Outlook you have:

Outlook 2016: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\16.0\Outlook\

Outlook 2013: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\15.0\Outlook\

Outlook 2010: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\14.0\Outlook\

Outlook 2007: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\12.0\Outlook\

Next, you’ll create a new value inside that Outlook key. Right-click the Outlook key and choose New > Expandable String Value. Name the new value ForcePSTPath . Note that if you’re working with an OST file rather than a PST file, you can create a value named ForceOSTPath instead. In fact, it’s probably a good idea to create both values so you can keep all your Outlook data files together in one location.

Double-click the new ForcePSTPath (or ForceOSTPath ) value to open it’s properties window and type the location where you want Outlook to store new data files into the “Value data” box. Click OK when you’re done.

You can now exit Registry Editor. Outlook should now create new PST files in the location you specified and you can also now use File Explorer to drag the PST file from your old location to the new one. When you reopen Outlook, everything should continue working as before.

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Whether you’re a professional with years of emails in Outlook or a personal user that wants to backup their Gmail account offline, Outlook is a standard tool of many of our daily lives.  Now you know a bit more about your Outlook data files and what you can do with them.  With today’s massive inbox sizes, your PST files can often be some of your larger personal data files, but the methods shown in this article can help you store your data files where you want.