Chinese handwriting keyboard on amazon fire tablet

It took me a little effort to find this, so I figured that I would do a blog post on it. It’s pretty easy to do. Just follow the instructions on installing Google Play Store. You can find plenty of them. Here are a couple:

https://www.howtogeek.com/232726/how-to-install-the-google-play-store-on-your-amazon-fire-tablet/

https://www.androidpolice.com/2020/07/11/install-play-store-amazon-fire-tablet/

Once you’ve installed the Google Play store, you could go into it and install the Gboard. Hope this works for you! If you have any issues, please comment below.

My travel packing checklist

I wrote this list mainly for myself, but thought maybe others could benefit from this. No matter how much experience you have traveling, I think you’ll always run into something you forget. Hopefully this list can help you minimize those things and allow you to enjoy your trip more rather than you needing to get out and get something because of an emergency.

Medicine – obvious #1 on my list. It’s not always easy to get medications, especially in foreign countries. Bring the ones you need – anything that you’re prescribed. For me, luckily, I don’t take any prescription medicines except for Montelukast (Singulair) if I have an allergy. I guess you can’t predict allergies. For that reason, I carry Loratadine (Claritin) as well. At my last doctor’s visit, he asked me to try Zyrtec instead of the combination of the two, so I will do that next time. Aside from the allergy medications, I would recommend some of the common ones. These include Tylenol or Ibuprofen, NyQuil, etc. If you need pills for motion sickness, sleep aid, caffeine, etc., you probably want to bring some of those as well. Don’t assume that you’ll be able to buy medications abroad. Some over the counter medications in the US are not sold over the counter in other countries. I was shocked to hear that Ibuprofen was considered a strong medication in another country. I also carry stomach medication just in case I eat something bad. I use the Japanese one pictured below. If you have asthma, even if you haven’t had an attack in a long time, be sure to keep an inhaler and if you use a nasal rinse, you might want to bring a bottle and some salt packets. I usually just mix mine with cold bottled water, but most hotels have water kettles to boil water.

Glasses/contacts – I recommend having an extra set of each just in case. What can you do if you can’t see?

Toiletries – toothbrush, toothpaste, floss, maybe a small bottle of mouthwash. Unless you’re staying in Asia, your hotel will not likely have these available for you. They may have some available for sale, but I like to carry my own.

Charging cables – you don’t want to be desperate without a cable. Do whatever you can to avoid paying the tourist price for a crappy cable. In Las Vegas, they were trying to sell generic iPhone cables for $40! Bring your own cable. I like Anker cables, but will carry super cheap cables I get off Amazon as spares as I lose cables pretty often. I also have couple of cables that charge both, my watch and phone.

Nail clipper – I cut my nails almost every week and I’ve bought countless nail clippers abroad. I think it’s good to keep one with you just in case.

Shaving Razors – I’ve also bought many of these abroad. If you’re staying in Asia, most hotels will probably provide you some disposable ones. I would recommend that you have at least one set with you.

Noise-cancelling Headphones – Bose QC35II – I don’t travel without them. I turn them on while I’m on a plane even if I’m not listening to anything just to cancel out the noise. Like a friend said, “They’re expensive, but they’re worth it.”

Humidifier – I keep a little mini humidifier with me when I travel because hotels don’t usually have them. This one works great for me.

Travel power adapter – I keep one of these even if I’m traveling domestically. I recommend you get one of those that has usb charging. I use mine for a night light and usb charging. Additionally, most plugs on airplanes are universal and they tend to stay in much better than standard U.S prongs. The one I use is this one.

Shoes/Slippers – If I’m traveling for work, I always keep a pair of sneakers in the luggage or the dress shoes in the luggage if I’m not heading for business the same day. Always have a set of sneakers or slippers just to be comfortable. I might also bring a pair of flip flops if I plan on swimming.

Extra underwear/socks – I always bring a couple of extra just in case there’s a flight delay or you get dirty for some reason, etc.

Workout clothes/Bathing suit – if you know that where you’re going will have a gym/pool, you should bring a set even if you don’t think you’ll have time to use the facilities. Many times, I’ve gone and been up at 5 am wondering what I should do. The gym is a great way to help you get over jet-lag.

WiFi hotspot – I have one of these so that I can share WiFi among my multiple devices – laptop/iPhone/iPad, but it’s becoming less and less necessary. United airplanes allow you to switch devices as you wish.

First aid kit – if you’re going to be outdoors and not staying at a nice hotel, bringing a first-aid kit with you. Your first aid kit should have things like alcohol, Neosporin, itch cream, bandages, etc.

Portable battery – I don’t usually need/use it, but I carry a portable battery with me most of the time just in case. If you get one, get one that can charge with multiple interfaces – micro-USB and iPhone if you can find it. I use this one. It’s a bit heavy, but it has a high capacity and it charges very quickly.

Laundry detergent – I’m pretty cheap, so I almost never use the hotel laundry service. If I’m staying for more than a week or so, I would look for a laundromat and do the laundry myself if laundry machines are not available in the hotel. If they are, all the better. For this reason, I usually keep a couple of detergent pods in my suitcase as well.

Hope this helps! Please tell me about some of the things you pack in the comments. 🙂

Use yum to manage your packages and stop using rpm!

I hate seeing the RPMDB altered message when doing yum updates!

Transaction Summary
=======================================================================================================================
Install 1 Package
Upgrade 1 Package

Total size: 309 M
Is this ok [y/d/N]: y
Downloading packages:
Running transaction check
Running transaction test
Transaction test succeeded
Running transaction
Warning: RPMDB altered outside of yum.

For that reason, I tell sysadmins when installing or upgrading rpms to use:

yum -y install <rpm file>

and to use

yum -y remove <rpm name>

to remove the rpm you want.

Solaris pkg upgrade fails with “maximum number of instances of the package which may be supported at one time on the same system has already been met” message

This message is pretty awesome, isn’t it? You can get this message when trying to upgrade a package. At least that’s what happened to me.

username# pkgadd -d .

The following packages are available:

  1  pkgname          pkgname

                          (sparc) version.sol5.sparc

Select package(s) you wish to process (or 'all' to process all packages). (default: all) [?,??,q]: 1

Processing package instance <pkgname> from </tmp/ven/solaris>

pkgname(sparc) version.sol5.sparc Illumio

Current administration requires that a unique instance of the <pkgname> package be created.  However, the maximum number of instances of the package which may be supported at one time on the same system has already been met.

 No changes were made to the system.

This issue is pretty easy to get around. You just need point your admin file that has the right options. In my case, my admin file needed the instance=overwrite:

mail=
instance=overwrite
partial=ask
runlevel=ask
Require that our dependencies are met when installing.
idepend=quit
However, if someone tries to uninstall us but another package depends on us,
we should just warn them & ask if they want to proceed anyway.
rdepend=ask
space=ask
setuid=ask
conflict=ask
action=nocheck
networktimeout=60
networkretries=3
authentication=quit
keystore=/var/sadm/security
proxy=
basedir=default

If you’re using instance=ask, it works also. It’ll just ask you before overwriting.