Category: littlesister

USAFA Letter: 13 August 1990

dad, history, littlesister

My mother, Angie Fryer, kept meticulous records of every letter I sent home as a cadet at the US Air Force Academy from 30 June 1988 to 27 May 1992. She also kept numerous other related news articles, photos, and other correspondence. These are chronologically stored in several 3 ring binders, which she gave me a few years ago before she passed away on Christmas Eve 2022.

That summer in 1990, in addition to leave, I served as a survival instructor in the SERE program (“Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape”) at USAFA, and also served as a “Philmont Ranger.” These are a few photos from that summer.

“Wes Fryer, SERE Survival Instructor at USAFA – Summer 1990” (CC BY 2.0) by Wesley Fryer
“The ”Rabbit Puppet”” (CC BY 2.0) by Wesley Fryer
“Philmont Memories 1990” (CC BY 2.0) by Wesley Fryer

Since Rachel is currently a cadet at USAFA in her 2 degree summer programs, I looked for some correspondence I sent home that summer. I found a letter dated 13 August 1990, which was just after the end of summer programs before the start of the academic year, my “2 degree” or junior year at USAFA.

Mon. 13 AUG 1990 1800
AIR FORCE ACADEMY

Dear Mom, Dad & Trudy ~

Hello! Sorry I missed you all when I called on Sunday! I don’t really have time to call, so I thought I’d write a quick note & send the 2 enclosures.

School is going good so far — and tonight it looks like I’ll do my first homework assignment! Training NCO has taken up (and is & will continue to) take a lot of time — but I’m enjoying it and the squadron’s doing very good military wise.

Guess what I did this past weekend? Along with Brad (my roommate), Tim Greminger & Eric Marshall (Firsties I went to Philmont with) I climbed my first “14’er”! We climbed Mt. Elbert, which is the highest peak in Colorado & the 2ⁿᵈ highest mountain in CONUS! It was tough, but I enjoyed it & am glad I went. Hopefully the pics we took will turn out.

As you can see — unfortunately — our 1ˢᵗ tourney is the weekend of Sharol’s wedding. I’m the trip planner for the Salt Lake trip — so unfortunately I’ll miss the wedding. I’ll hafta write Sharol a note.

Hope all’s well at home — I’ll probably call next Thurs weekend!

Love,
Wesley

“USAFA Letter – 13 AUG 1990” (CC BY 2.0) by Wesley Fryer

A couple of weeks ago, I drove 1500+ miles from North Carolina to Colorado Springs to deliver Rachel’s car to her at USAFA. It was a long journey but well worth it. Lots of water under the bridge since the summer of 1990, 35 years ago, but still lots of water left (God willing) to pass under as well.

“Rachel’s new car! USAFA Graduation 2025” (CC BY 2.0) by Wesley Fryer
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USAFA Memories of 3 Generations

dad, littlesister, podcasts, wildcat, youtube

This evening after dinner dad, Rachel and I recorded an audio interview discussing our memories of basic training and our first two years (respectively) at the US Air Force Academy. I published this to the Storycorps archive and on YouTube, and linked the interviews on the oral history page of our Family History website.

I used the AI features of Descript.com to create a description of our interview, and it also identified timestamped topics from our conversation:

Air Force Academy Memories Across Generations – Classes of 1963, 1992 and 2027

Join us on Christmas Eve 2024 in Charlotte, North Carolina as three members of the Fryer family, spanning multiple generations, reflect on their experiences at the Air Force Academy. From Tom Fryer of the class of 1963, to Wes Fryer of the class of 1992, and current cadet Rachel Fryer of the class of 2027, hear their stories of in-processing, basic training, survival courses, and the traditions that both endured and evolved over the years. From humorous anecdotes about boxing classes to the challenges of adjusting to the rigors of the Academy, each shares unique perspectives on their freshman and sophomore years at the prestigious institution. Don’t miss this heartwarming and insightful discussion on the legacy and transformation within the Air Force Academy, spanning over six decades.

00:00 Introduction and Setting the Scene
00:19 Meet the Panel: Generations of Air Force Academy Graduates
01:56 In-Processing Day Memories
03:01 Basic Training Experiences
06:28 Physical Training and Adjusting to Altitude
08:39 Spirit Missions and Salmonella Incident
14:14 Summer Programs and Field Trips
18:52 Three Degree Year Reflections
19:33 Academic Life and Majors
20:43 Christmas Adventures and Travel Stories
22:35 Current Academic Challenges
26:40 Boxing and Physical Training
31:36 Extracurricular Activities and Debate Team
33:38 Financials and Borrowing Cars
35:52 Concluding Thoughts and Future Plans

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Saving Family Audio from 2010 on iPadio

littlesister, podcasts

One of the hazards of using 3rd party websites for recording and sharing media files is they sometimes go offline. Some people (like @tonyvincent) have referred to this as the ‘web 2.0 graveyard.’ This evening, thanks to an older comment on one of my WordPress sites, I learned that iPadio.com has ‘almost’ gone offline. Officially was discontinuing support and hosting for existing audio files in April 2019.

Thankfully, however, 15 of the 17 recordings I created and posted to iPadio starting back in 2010 are still on the website, so I was able to download them and upload them to Amazon S3. Each one of these was originally posted here, to our family learning blog, so I’ve also added the Amazon S3 link on the original posts. I’ve also linked those below as “captions.” So thankful to be able to preserve these audio recordings!

The title / subject and details of each recording are included BELOW each embedded audio file as a “caption.”

“One Rice, Thousand Gold” by Rachel Fryer (4/5/2010)
“Humidity and Bread” by Sarah Fryer (5/12/2010)
“Rachel explains how the eye works” (5/14/2010)
“Rachel Endorses Art Snacks” (5/25/2010)
Public Schools Are Not Businesses: Why Educational Sharing Matters (22 min, 56 sec, Wes Fryer, 10 June 2010)

Meet the Tesla Electric Car (3 min, 17 sec, by Wes Fryer, 11 June 2010)
A Ghost Story from Colonial Williamsburg by Rachel (2 min, 15 sec, Rachel Fryer, 29 June 2010)
A Ghost Story from Colonial Williamsburg by Sarah (4 min, 14 sec, Sarah Fryer, 29 June 2024)
Things we Learned about Colonial Williamsburg (15 min, 11 sec, Wes Fryer, 3 July 2010 – Original blog post)
Rachel Buys Her First iTunes Audiobooks (5 min, 35 sec, Rachel Fryer, 2 Sept 2010)
Rachel on Toy Story (43 sec, Rachel Fryer, 27 July 2010) – Original blog post)
Stories We Wish We Had Recorded (11 min, 35 sec, Wes Fryer, 29 July 2010)
Rachel Teaches at AudioBoo and the Zebra Print at the University of North Texas (14 min, 12 sec, Rachel Fryer, fall 2010)
Study Guide for “Technology for Teachers” Final Exam (11 min, 47 sec, Wesley Fryer, fall 2010, archived course curriculum)
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The Family of Twilight (French 2 Project)

littlesister, school

Rachel, who is now a 9th grader, created this poster over the weekend for a geneology project assigned in her French 2 class at Casady.

She wrote and typed the script she will share in class tomorrow, and agreed to audio record it for me with English translations tonight. (And she agreed to let me publish it here on our family learning blog!) Here’s the recording as a narrated image, it’s 2 minutes and 12 seconds long:

This project was recorded with a quick app smash on my iPhone. I used:

  1. The free app PhotoScan by Google Photos (to scan the poster)
  2. The free app Squaready (to save the rectangular photo as a square image)
  3. The free app Voice Record Pro (to record the audio and export the narrated image as a video to the iPhone camera roll)
  4. The free app YouTube (to upload the video to my YouTube channel)

Check out more of Rachel’s projects and work on RachelFryer.com. We still have that WordPress instance set to cross-post from Learning Signs, when her “category” on the blog is selected. At some point in the not-too-distance future I’m betting she’ll want to do a redesign of the site and rebrand it. (She’s recently changed both her Twitter and Instagram channel names, for example.) When she does hopefully I’ll persuade her to maintain / keep / archive all her old work and media projects.

Learn more about creating narrated image / narrated art projects like this on ShowWithMedia.com.

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9th Grade Posters for French 2 and English

art, littlesister, school, travel, writing

Here are a couple posters Rachel created recently for her first week back at school, and first week as a high school freshman.

Here’s a poster she created for French class about her summer holidays / vacation / break. That’s a great looking skyline of Seattle, Washington!

Here is another poster she created, this time for 9th grade English class. Students were ask to sketch a scene from “The Alchemist,” which was one of their summer reading books.

We definitely have a talented artist in our home!

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Mathematical Artistic Dragons

art, littlesister, math, youtube

Okay. I stumbled upon this video, and it’s absolutely amazing! By the youtube channel named Vi Hart, this video is kind of a skit narrated by a kid in math class. The kid is doodling, and creates some amazing drawings! If you watch the whole video….. you will be enlightened. WITH MATH ART DRAGON ENLIGHTMENT INSPIRAION SKILLZ like skills in fencing from metalfencepanels.weebly.com.

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Photos and Stories from Washington DC

dad, history, littlesister, mom, travel, trip

The past two weeks Shelly, Rachel and I have traveled together in Philadelphia and Washington DC. I created two different, short digital stories using the free iPad app “Adobe Voice” to reflect on some of our experiences around the DC area.

I also posted a lot of our photos from the trip to several different Flickr albums:

  1. ISTE 2015
  2. Tall Ships in Philadelphia
  3. Washington DC July 2015
  4. Harpers Ferry

Over the fourth of July when we hung out with our friends, the Casebeers, I had an opportunity to interview Jonah about his amazing experiences last year at MIT for the Battlecode competition. I published that interview as a podcast on my main blog.

Today is our final day of sightseeting before we fly home to Oklahoma, and I’ll add our photos from today (which we expect to include the National Archives and the Library of Congress, among other destinations) to our Washington DC July 2015 photo set. We’ve had a great trip!

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Rachel Reports from the Volcano House

littlesister, nature, travel, trip

Today in my STEM class I showed an amazing video of eruptions from the Kilauea Volcano in Hawaii. This was one of our “curiosity links” for this week. In one class, student questions about how lava cools led me to discuss “lava tubes” and show this photo of a lava tube which I took in 2009 when our family visited the big island.

I ended up also finding this short video of Rachel, at age five, reporting from the Volcano House. Oh how this makes me want to go back to Hawaii with our family!

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Saving Bruce the Shark

creation, littlesister, video, youtube

This short video, “Saving Bruce the Shark,” is a creative story told and created by Rachel yesterday using the iPad app, “ToonTastic.” Since we added a new iPad to our family collection, Rachel has inherited her own. Mom is encouraging her to use more apps for creative “making,” since her favorite computer activities continue to be WATCHING YouTube videos and playing Minecraft. Rachel is a creative storyteller and “maker!”

 

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Bowling is Fun Enhanced eBook

dad, littlesister, travel, wildcat, youtube

A few weeks ago when Rachel and I were in Manhattan, Kansas, we went bowling with my dad. I took photos while we were bowling with the idea that we would later create an eBook together. We did (using Book Creator for iPad) and took turns narrating it. It is available as a downloadable EPUB, a PDF without audio, and as a video on YouTube. I plan to submit this to Apple’s iBookstore but have not done it yet.

 

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