The cable would have had to reach out of my bedroom, down the stairs and around the stairs to the office where the modem/wireless router is, which is why I was pissed to learn that I can't use my laptop's wireless.
Ya I hear ya. A while back my roommate and I used a cable that was probably 30' or so, not quite sure how long it was but it stretched from my room, through the living room, and into his room which was a considerable distance away. I don't know how much a cable that long would cost... but my roommate had it just lying around so we went with it.
Shit in your case you wouldn't be using it that long anyway if you weren't going to be using the online capabilities so you could just use the cable and return it and get your money back.
What you should have done is taken the xbox back and bought the white box as soon as you noticed the game needs a hard drive. Saves money.
I'm playing Bioshock with great relish. Megs enjoys it a lot too, so we do it together at night when it's dark out. It's not a complex game but the texture of the game is more than wonderful. The storytelling is masterful.
Like I said I only had it for playing games not online crap. The only reason I was trying to get online was to get updates to play older xbox games which I would have had to do with the hard drive 360 anyways. So either way it a fucking rip.
More or less. Just wait until you get the 'red rings of death'; wherein your Xbox console has a heart attack, keels over and promptly dies - thus meaning you have to send it into Xbox for repair, as it's an 'internal problem'; which forces you to register your details, while making sure they know 'exactly' when your warranty runs out and when to shaft you if you ring up once it happens again (God help you if you're still not covered by that six month warranty)...
Happened to me 3 times. Twice on one console, once on another. I kicked up the biggest shit that I could, got a replacement and 3 months free Gold Live.
...but, the fact is, I had to go through that shit 3 times.
All xbox 360's have a new shiny three year warranty from Microsoft for the aforementioned problems. New xbox's are rumored to have had some things fixed. Sucks that they exist, but I felt confident in buying one once I heard about the three year warranty.