[jlindquist74]

*hikes pants up a few inches above his waist*

Suggestion: Consider this a part of your engineering education.

If I had a nickel for every time a vendor's product didn't *quite* perform according to spec, or some library or application fell short of the claims in its documentation, or behaved in some odd way that got in the way of my efficiently-planned project or solution, I'd be long retired.

Sometimes you can get a vendor to fix what ails you. But often, there isn't enough time, enough money, enough material, or enough staffing to do it. (You may also not be a big enough customer/client to accommodate.) You will usually work around it as best you can, and move forward. Maybe you and the vendor can fix it for release 2, but business or market pressures say you gotta ship release 1 without that fix.

If you choose this for a profession, you will run into this a lot.

You might study other teams' designs--even if their robot design is radically different from yours, there may be an element you can adapt this weekend, or carry in to the next competition. Or maybe it will help you design workarounds next year, if you're an underclassman. Learning from others' work is half the fun, anyways...