A pithy comic strip about life, love, lust and puthy cats.

Est. 1985

Extra, Extra!

The Christmas Caller II

By Jimmy Johnson

December 22, 1993


I don’t have time for a full post this morning, but because I started the above sequence, The Christmas Caller, I thought I’d best show you the next episode. Those of you who’ve been coming here regularly over time know this blog really is a personal affair that I post more mornings than not while having my coffee and getting ready to meet the day. I hope that explains a lot.


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14 responses to “The Christmas Caller II”

  1. TruckerRon Avatar

    I remember well the BI (before internet) days when small businesses took reservation by phone. Big chains, of course, had a toll-free number with people who took your info and made the reservation over the company’s computers. The local motel received info from headquarters, most often on a terminal linked to the corporate’s mainframe, sometimes by carrier pigeon. 🙂
    .
    As a HS student I saw the IBM 360s used by Holiday Inn at their headquarters in Memphis. They actually showed us a few FORTRAN commands and allowed us to write a simple program to calculate what the mythical Dutch payment of $24 for Manhattan would be worth in 1970. We got to keypunch the cards, run them into a reader, and learn about debugging, all in an afternoon.

    1. Bryan Avatar
      Bryan

      Ugh, that brings back some bad memories from college. Luckily we only had about 1 month with those beasts.

    2. Galliglo of Ohio Avatar
      Galliglo of Ohio

      Computer users of today have no idea about key-punching cards!

  2. Steve from Royal Oak, Mi Avatar

    Mary Lou had good taste at an early age. Glad that they finally got together

  3. Mark in TTown Avatar
    Mark in TTown

    Look up the strip for 4/2/1993. I wonder if Jimmy was foreshadowing Mary Lou’s appearance? And as I said on Facebook, Jimmy gave Arlo one of his funniest lines in this strip.

    1. BarbaraRivera Avatar
      BarbaraRivera

      How can I get there? The Go Comics calendar only brings me back to May of 1994. Help, please.

  4. Ghost Avatar
    Ghost

    Re 8-19-20 real-time cartoon: If sofas could talk…they’d be encouraged not to. “That’s some nice cushions ya got there. Be a real shame if something happened to them.”

  5. TruckerRon Avatar

    What a great use for technology… They’re using 3D printing based on ultrasound images of fetuses, both to prepare for in-the-womb medical treatments, but so blind parents can feel and thus “see” the images!
     
    http://www.jewishworldreview.com/0820/ultrasounds_blind_parents.php3

    1. curmudgeonly ex-professor Avatar
      curmudgeonly ex-professor

      Wow! That is incredible to be sure!

  6. Jackie Avatar
    Jackie

    I remember the first computer I saw in my university in 1961. It took up an entire room, especially air conditioned (building was not?) Dust free, only a few people had access. My cousin got his phD in computer science. We thought he was a total geek and weird, hard to find employment in early 60s. He ended up dying in his 40s from botched sugery for bleeding ulcers from job stress.

    Computers must have been difficult in early days? I wonder what he’d think of today’s world? As I sit here typing on an Android phone with millions more gigabites than those room size computers he worked with.

    1. curmudgeonly ex-professor Avatar
      curmudgeonly ex-professor

      First computer I recall was at a steel firm near Cincy when a college group toured around ’58. It, too, seemed to occupy a large room. For some reason, the (IBM?) number 7020 or 7040 sticks in my mind. Was either the model of business computer which would have been used then? Anyone knowledgeable in that field is welcome to reply.

  7. Jackie Avatar
    Jackie

    Oops, did math, he was my age! He was in early 30s at death in 1970s. His widow got benefits as employment related stress causing death I believe. They must have been bears?

    The computers my friends at NASA operated were huge too, giant banks of technology.

  8. Dennis Avatar
    Dennis

    I wonder if ‘Ghost’ is from New York or Chicago…

    Jimmy, I think we understand about your blog. We just want more. You are that good.