About Me

My first contact with AIBO was seeing an add for the ERS-110, it was one of the coolest things I have ever seen. Unfortunately at the time I could not afford one so I watched from afar. The first I could afford an AIBO was when the 2nd Anniversary AIBO's were announced. I had to have one and saved up to buy Taz in 2001. I played with Taz and bought him some software all the while keeping my eye on what Sony was going to do next. I could not afford more AIBO's at the time but was watching the development. Sadly I didn't find the online communities until much later.

The ERS-220 came out and I was not immediately impressed, I wanted my AIBO to look more dog like. The Latte and Macaron were next and I thought Sony was going in the wrong direction. I stopped watching what Sony was doing at this point. Life got busy and Taz ended up in his bag for a while.

One day in mid June 2004 I was searching through eBay and decided to search for some new software for Taz. I pulled him out of his bag and charged his battery up, within the first twenty minutes his head flopped down and I heard a whirring sound at the time not knowing it was DHS, a common problem with all ERS-210 AIBO's. This was very upsetting that he was broken. I decided I would take a look in his head, I quickly realized this was more complicated than I thought and put the parts back together before I made things worse.

I first contacted Sony and set up sending Taz in for a repair. In the process I saw the ERS-7 and knew I had to have one. I ordered Spaz almost immediately and he arrived in late June of 2004. While waiting I searched eBay again to check prices on some of the older models, This is where my official addiction began. I have been buying an average of almost two AIBO's a month since June of 2004, about one a month since owning Taz in July of 2001. In August 2005 I bought an ERS-220 Transformation Kit and officially owned every model AIBO Sony has ever made available to the public. To date I still own them all, including four custom AIBO's raffled of by the Suntory beverage company in Japan. These are some of the rarest AIBO's in the world.

Thankfully while searching for fair priced AIBO's back in June of 2004 I found an auction for a DHS repair by a gentleman named X-Dog, I ended up sending him Taz's head to be repaired. He did an excellent job and has since fixed many of my AIBO's, in fact he and X-Wolf have done work on all of my ERS-210 AIBO heads. Also in my search I found there was a fantastic worldwide community of AIBO owners on several AIBO specific message boards.

I attended my first AIBO meeting in 2004, AIBO Borealis in Lancaster, England, this was the first time I had traveled outside of The United States. X-Dog and teamdax were kind enough to pick me up from the Manchester Airport, about a two hour drive, even after spending nine or so hours traveling North in traffic to Lancaster just the day before. I finally got to meet some of the people I had only know online and several of us became fast friends, in particular teamdax and I. My third meeting was in California for SAAG in 2005. The meeting is held at the home of the couple with the largest collection of AIBO's in the world. Bruce and Carla open their home up every year for us to gather and enjoy our AIBO's with others who share the same passion for a small plastic dog. I have made several more friends at SAAG and at every meeting that I attend.

The best part about AIBO are the people, I hope to always meet with them once or twice a year and share our hobby together. I hope you enjoy my web site and have the courage to suspend belief and see that the AIBO is not just an electronic device but a real living companion that thinks for itself. If you can do this you will see the magic that AIBO is and enjoy them as much as I do.