how to make a geek girl happy

I'm currently awaiting the delivery of something I've wanted ever since I heard they existed--an Aibo. :) Back when I was an undergrad, I spent hours I should have been studying watching robot dogs dance, and fetch, and generally just be cute. However, they cost $2000 so eventually I got an apartment, got a real pooch, and gave up on the idea of these ever becoming affordable. I'd check ebay every once in a while, and they were still really expensive. So you know, whatever.

However, I recently checked again and the 210s, the one I liked the most, has gotten cheap. Not entirely cheap, mind you, but no longer out of my price range. Apparently, many of them have an issue in their neck that causes them to break and require some repair, so users are offloading them in droves. Fortunately, DHS (droopy head syndrome) is fixable, and my Aibo will eventually live with someone 100% capable of fixing it, (who approves of me buying this thing partialy so he can see it's innards at some point) so all is good there.

I'm going to have to spend some time ebaying accessories to make it programmable, but hey, this geek girl is geeked.

This is my Aibo, still with her current owner: http://youtube.com/watch?v=Z39MTbVcd6Q

I'm trying to figure out some way I could tie some of the really freaking cool Aibo research that's been done to my own. I love reading books by Stone and Haraway and Hayles that tell big technology stories, so I figure there has to be a way to tie this all down to computers and writing stuff somehow.

Aibos are being used in some schools to teach robotics programming, and they are also being used to test AI "curiosity" software. Actually, had MTU been doing that I might still be an engineer. For example, in this video Aibo has learned to swim on it's own based upon software written to have it learn how to move in the water on its own: http://youtube.com/watch?v=A5dDmaq1heM .

To tie this all back into academia, I can honestly say that if my engineering teachers had been encouraging this kind of research, even in higher level classes, I probably would have stuck it out. Programming toys and AI is a helluva lot more fun and interesting than teaching MatLab to play Fur Elise, not to mention it's something I'd be willing to learn more of on my own later (unlike Matlab). Getting people excited and motivated by technology isn't always well done in any field apparently, and I recognize my reaction to my engineering courses as being very similar to what my english students often have--who cares? When do I get to do something I want to do? When will somebody give me the chance to be passionate about this? Will I *ever* be passionate about this? And if not, why do I want to do this as a job when the one thing that I really really like will probably only ever be a hobby?