Category: Holidays

Happy Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving everyone. So as everyone knows Thanksgiving is a great time to get together with family and what better to do with family then play computer games. In my family Age of Empires II is still the all-time classic. This afternoon while getting one of my computers ready to play AOE2 I noticed that the colors were showing up weird. This particular computer is running Windows 7 64 bit. After trying a bunch of things and searching around online I found the answer. To make the colors show up right you need to follow these steps:

  1. Launch the game.
  2. While it is launching start the Task Manager.
  3. Click on the Processes tab.
  4. Find explorer.exe, click on it then click on the End Process button.
  5. Alt+Tab to get back to AOE2

That’s it and you’re off and running like normal. When you’re done follow these steps to start the explorer.exe process again:

  1. Ctl+Alt+Delete then select Start Task Manager.
  2. File -> New Task (Run…)
  3. Type explorer.exe in the text field where it says Open.
  4. Click OK

Now you have everything back like it should be and you’re good to go.
I hope this helps someone else out there that might be trying to play AOE2 on a newer computer or any other older game. When trying to play any older game try to run it in compatibility mode and try this. If neither of those work then you’re probably out of luck. Enjoy the turkey and pie!

Fun Games For Your Next Party

I recently played some fun games that I wanted to pass on. I played them at Christmas parties, but they would work great for any holiday or party.

The first one is a taste testing game. Here’s how it works. You need a variety of sodas that are similar in color and taste. The game I played used 7 two liter bottles. What you do is pour each one into its own cup and write a number on it. Then you take and pour a little from each cup into each players cup one flavor at a time allowing them time to drink it and mark down on a piece of paper what flavor they think that it is. Here is the break down for the game I played:

1. Sierra Mist
2. Squirt
3. 7up
4. Generic Brand Squirt
5. Generic Brand 7Up
6. Fresca
7. Sprite

The next game is a point game that involves eating M&Ms. Here is how it works. First you count out a certain amount of each colored M&M and place them in a brown paper sack. There is a sack for each player. Then each player pulls an M&M out of the sack without looking and shows it to the person keeping score. You keep doing this until the first person reaches the desired amount of points. The game I played the winning number was 500 and here is the count of each color along with its corresponding points:

Blue – 5 pts (8 M&Ms)
Green – 10pts(7 M&Ms)
Orange – 25pts (6 M&Ms)
Red – 50pts (5 M&Ms)
Yellow – 75pts (4 M&Ms)
Brown – 100pts (3 M&Ms)

The last game is one that I made for a Christmas party that we had, It’s Christmas Bingo. You can check it out and print off some of your own cards for your next Christmas party by going here: http://www.joebillman.com/christmas-bingo.php. Enjoy these game ideas!