Whilst I and a number of the other MVP's were at the MVP summit last year Microsoft gave us a whole bunch of freebies. Freebies are nice (keeps my stationary box stocked up), but they're much better when they're useful. They excelled in this manner - I use my portfolio thing every day and the XBox 360 controller is pretty useful. Haven't used it yet, but the USB p2p LAN thingy looks clever as well.

There was one other gift that I really wanted to make use of:



A bluetooth headset. Y'see, I've got one of those fancy mobiles that should be able to use it as a hands-free device.

But I've not used it yet. There was a problem:



The mains adapter was a US one. I live in the UK.

Simple, go out and buy an adapter for it.... Problem is actually finding them, UK->USA is easy to find, USA->UK much less so.

The only one I could find was this one (GBP2.99 in Maplin, GBP6.99 in Dixons):



Now, notice it has some stupid border/bevel thing around the edge. Look back to the previous picture and notice that it won't actually fit in. I want to slap the muppet that designed such a useless "feature".

I'm a big advocate of picking the right tool for the right job. So instead of picking a file or a (hack)saw I chose:


A knife

10 minutes later:



(Notice the shards of white plastic in the background - my room is now covered in them)

Problem solved:



But I managed to screw my blade up a little [rolleyes]



It's now sitting here charging itself ready for first use [grin]

Given that this is a development journal I suppose there should be a moral, or at least a reason for posting. This is a "real world" exercise in showing how difficult it is to solve design issues once the product has shipped. For more details, read the book I'm currently enjoying: Code Complete, Second Edition.