Baby auto rocker

Here's a mini project I am working on.  My new son (~4 weeks old) is doing pretty well, but he has trouble calming down when he wants to fall asleep. My wife and I spend a lot of time rocking him, and that helps to calm him down.

I thought it would be great for him to be able to rock automatically, but all of the rocking devices I have seen are swings that require the baby to be upright, which is not ideal for putting him to sleep.  I decided to make a basic rocking machine out of parts I had lying around.

Another day, another transmission job

Sometimes it feels like it never ends.  But nonetheless, another day has brought forth another chapter in my struggle to have a perfectly working car.  So let's get down to it.

48V LiFePO4 Battery Repair, AKA: Something goes right for once this month

Amidst countless failures this month, most of which to do with my VW Golf, and will be saved for another post, I was successful at recommissioning my 48V bike battery.  And I'm pretty psyched about that, since a new one would have been well over $500 shipped.  Let's have a look at the story.

48v Bike battery pack investigations

As I think I mentioned a few posts ago, my 48v bike battery seems to have a problem with cutting out under full throttle.  This is the case even immediately after charging.  I haven't known much about the battery pack, since I bought it used and it came with no documentation, but after reviewing lots of eBay auctions selling similar items, I have a pretty good guess at what I'm dealing with.  I think I've even figured out what happened, and what to do if there's any chance of fixing it.

The Probe awakens early from its winter nap

Well just when I thought I'd finally gotten past this auto maintenance nightmare... What was only supposed to be an exciting couple of weeks in incoming baby-world (my wife is due next weekend), I have spent basically dealing with my cars.  I'll try to summarize the story as simply as possible.

Windows 8 audio clicks and glitches narrowed down to Malwarebytes

Ever since I got my Windows 8 PC, I have been having serious problems with audio.  Basically all sound playback on my system experiences a brief  but frequent click, skip, glitch, stutter, whatever you prefer.  I can reproduce the issue on any sound card or firewire sound interface (devices tested include the onboard Conexant SmartAudio HD, my external Phonic Helix 12, and my Edirol FA-101).  All of them seem to have audio clicks, with the firewire interfaces' clicks seeming more harsh for whatever reason.

Seal replaced, back on the road!

Last night things moved ahead considerably.  I was very happy to see that the replacement seal arrived priority mail (from idparts.com - they've never done me wrong) on Monday, after I ordered it on Friday night.  I also went out and found a seal puller (similar to the one pictured) at Sears, of all places.  None of the regular auto parts stores carry this thing for some reason.

The elusive seal puller I finally obtained.