One of the oldest's Christmas presents this year was one year of Xbox Live for his Xbox 360.  What we didn't realize when we bought the service and a wireless controller to make playing MMPGs super-easy is that the XBox 360 requires a special wireless network adapter to be able to connect to our home network.  The bastards at Microsoft couldn't be bothered to design a connection that would allow a "generic" network adapter to work, and because I've been able to hook up all nature of things to our network, like say our Tivo, with standard network adapters it never occurred to me that we'd have to buy a special one for the Xbox 360.  And what does one of Microsoft's little gizmos cost?  Oh, a cool $99.

Luckily we have two alternatives.  One is to hook the Xbox 360 directly to the router with an ethernet cable, but since our router is in my office on the second floor and the Xbox is hooked to the TV in our den in the basement that would have to be one very long cable.  Our other option is to use a powerline adapter which is the way I plan to go.  I've already set up a powerline kit to connect Celeste's computer to the network so I only need to get one more adapter to hook up the boy's XBox 360 which should save us at least $50, not to mention the little bit of satisfaction I'll be getting from not letting Microsoft screw me yet again.  I figure 20 years of this abuse is enough.