Merry Christmas Printout

Title: Merry Christmas Printout
Date: December, year unknown
Category: Holiday Decorations
Current status: Recycled

Man, dot matrix printers. Gotta love em. This was most likely created using some horrifying Commodore 64 program. Or maybe an early Apple computer. I don't recall. I do know that is was done on some snazzy white paper that was part of a toilet paper like ream with thos annoying feeder hole strips on the side. So, once you printed out your glorious 24-pin low res black & white picture (at 1/2 ppm), you got to try and tear stuff off all four sides without ripping the main sheet.

At one time, this was some high technology and everybody was just astounded that we could make these graven images out of little black dots. Sure they were blocky and in black and white and looked like they were created with the use of a straight edge, but man, computer printed graphics. It revolutionized the way kids made crappy projects for school. No more crayon drawings or pictures cut from magazines. No sir! Now you could tell your 25 Mhz 386 to print a picture of something that looked vaguely like a decorated evergreen along with some text in a font that looks like it was created for a low budget cartoon. Awesome!

Dallas Zoo Map

Title: Map of the Dallas Zoo
Date: Before 1989
Category: Info
Current Status: Recycled

I don't have a whole lot to say about this one. To be honest, I don't even remember much about going. I know I was there, probably with my Dad, but I don't know if anybody else was with us.

This might have been just dad and me, in the summer of 1988 (before he got sick) during a week where Mom and Kristen were at Church Camp. If that's the case, then this was one of the things we did instead of our original plan, which was a roadtrip around Texas. I can't remember if work or money got in the way of that, but we ended up staying home. We did do some fun things... I think we went to the West End and played City Golf and ate ate The Croc n Rock restaurant. Dad let me watch the first Robocop movie (even though it was rated "R" and I was only 13). There was some other stuff, too, but I don't really remember any of it.

So, maybe we went to the zoo... who knows. Jenny the Elephant was most likely there when I went, since she arrived in 1986.

Hey kids! Feeding time for Reptiles is 2 pm every Tuesday! Watch the primates get fed at 3 pm every day!