As required to track progress, Tammy and I decided to weigh ourselves for the first time since Tammy was six months pregnant.

The shock and horror? I weighed an obscene 290.2 pounds on August 27th. I was iffy on starting P90X again, but once I saw that number, it was game on. Tammy and I decided to do the P90X Lean program to get this fat off our bodies. The lean program has a lot more cardio and sweating than the regular program, which is exactly what I need.

Anyway, I’ve already posted this on Facebook and Twitter, and as ashamed as I am, admitting my overweight problem and overcoming the issue is how I best conquer the issue.

As of today, we’re on day 2 of our first P90X Lean session, my entire body is sore. In fact, when I woke up today, I asked Tammy if I had been in a car accident! Nothing wants to move. This made the Cardio X DVD extremely hard today, but we got through it at about 2/3 pace they show on the disk.

Someone on Facebook told me about this great iPhone/iPad app that allows you to easily track calories today to keep yourself on your way to fitness. The app is called “LoseIt” and is in the app store for my favorite cost of $FREE. It synchronizes with their website at loseit.com.

My goal is set. I will lose 100 pounds by June, 2012, 9 months away. This will allow us to run 2 90-day P90X sessions and a final P90X2 session. P90X2 is not out yet, but is coming soon.

Anyway, wish us determination. We’ll need it.

A friend told me that this means hell to pay in your teenage years, I hope he isn’t right, haha!

This is my current status on facebook. Thought I’d share.

Blue Shield of California seeks rate hikes of as much as 59% for individuals

I think our family plan was a little over $700/mo for the four of us at that time which was what, about four years ago? Yikes.

Tammy only took two Motrin 800s after the birth of Alysa, one directly after birth and one pill two days after and has recovered exceptionally well.  Her nurses couldn’t believe her refusal of pills and was shocked to hear Tammy say her pain was 0 out of 10 on the day after delivery.  Amazing.

Alysa was our first jaundice baby and had to undergo phototherapy for a full day. Our room was slightly on the cold side and was hard to watch Alysa shiver under the lights. At times, I put Alysa in Tammy’s arms on the hospital bed and shined the light on her that way which seemed to help.

During the entire hospital stay, I was there 95% of the time. I only left to get more clothes for the extra night and to get food since the hospital only provided one complimentary meal for the husband. Speaking of food, the provided hospital food was actually really good here, something I can’t say I’ve ever experienced before at any other hospital I’ve ever been in. They had a long list of breakfast, lunch, and dinner meals (including steak), and you had your pick of two sides and a delicious dessert. I was expecting to run out and get food for us 3x a day but only had to get food for myself as Tammy was very pleased with what they served.

Alysa had her checkup yesterday and they said her jaundice appears much better based on her skin coloration. We were thrilled that Alysa didn’t need to get yet another poke on her heels.

The spelling of Alysa means “noble kind” or “princess.”
Born 11/22/2010, 8 pounds even, 19 3/4 inches.

Anyway, I put together a collection of photos over the last 7 days. Be sure to see the last photo in this collection, it is, by far, our favorite one! See below:

Alysa Just Delivered!

Everyone is Exhausted

Papa holds Alysa

Brittany and Cole say hi to Alysa

Alysa smiles in the hospital crib.

They wanted to sit in the hospital bed.

Alysa's first time in her new carseat!

Alysa arrives home - Brittany gets to hold her first

Alysa arrives home - Cole holds her next

Alysa feels the love!

We put Alysa in our master bedroom window for the morning sun (weather permitting) to help with her jaundice.

Brittany feeds Alysa

Brittany, smile for the camera!

Cole feeds Alysa

Grandma holds Alysa for the first time

Alysa wide awake, enjoying company

Thomas holds Alysa for the first time

Grandpa holds Alysa for the first time, grandma caught passing off the baby to Grandpa!

Grandpa gets alone time with Alysa

Grandma plays with Alysa

Grandma feeds Alysa

Alysa hamming it up for the camera

Our favorite photo of Alysa done by Tammy. The hand pose was entirely random and just a very lucky shot. Great job hun!

That’s it for now! All pictures can be clicked to enlarge to 800×600. All photos available in full 12.1 MP size (4000 x 3000), just email us a request and we’ll send it to you.

By the way, I’ve installed a new email notification plugin and this is my first post using it. Hope it all goes well and everyone receives just one email. If not, I’m sorry in advance. If you didn’t get an email and would like to join our mailing list, use our contact us link and we’ll get you added.

According to the ultrasound, the delivery date is November 19th which is right in line with what we predicted of November 24th. Tammy has only gained 13 pounds so far which is really good. All of the hiking and added activity has attributed to normal weight gain. The doctor even encouraged her to continue the activity!

The only thing we were lagging behind on was getting ready for Baby Girl Buehler. Up until 2 weeks ago, we had absolutely nothing purchased, no baby necessities, no crib, not even a diaper. Just before the vacation, we were able to find lots of baby specials and purchase most of the baby items we needed.

So far, we have:

• A crib (no mattress) on sale at WalMart.com. The crib can be turned into a daybed, toddler bed, and a even a full size headboard. The crib is beautiful and has wainscoting detailing on the headboard. Similar cribs were found at babies r us for $350 and we paid $150 with free shipping.
• Crib bedding
• Mattress pad
• Bassinet for our master bedroom on sale, $41. Baby rocker and bassinet combo.
• Clothes  – all on sale at various stores
• Baby bottles, bibs, receiving blankets, pacifiers, etc.
• Diaper bag
• Baby monitor (required for our multi-floor house)
• Baby health care kit (on sale)
• Grooming kit (on sale)
• 1,000 wipes
• Huggies size 1-2 192 quantity, 3 boxes (so far) on sale at amazon.com – NEED MORE

There’s several things we still need. Our biggest struggle is finding a good stroller, car seat travel system combo that is safe, reliable, and fits in the car. We’ve found two but WOW do these travel systems cost a fortune, even on eBay.

Our favorite travel systems are:

• Chicco Cortina Keyfit 30 Travel System (Rated the best and safest)
• Graco Quattro Tour Hamilton Travel System (not on Amazon, saw at babies r us, $250)

Anyway, we put together a small list of things we still need on amazon.com. The diapers can be purchased cheaper than list price if you subscribe to their 30% off subscription offer and then cancel it after the diapers are shipped. We paid $72 for 3 huge boxes of size 1-2 diapers, 576 diapers, or $0.13 a diaper, an AWESOME deal.

Our Amazon baby registry link:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/registry/baby/1HJ5I3100HKKA

Thanks everyone!

First, we have also upgraded to WordPress 3.0 Thelonious and switched to the default WordPress 3.0 “twenty ten” theme. We customized it a little bit with a new header (non-rotating) and cleaned out a lot of old plugins and junk. You’ll probably notice the site loads and operates a lot faster now.

Second, we opted to keep Menalto’s Gallery for our photos. This choice was easy after considering our options. The main thing that kept us with Gallery2 is the fact that Gallery 3 is close to release and we won’t have to reupload all of our images to some new gallery system. That saves us from trying to add captions to over 5 years worth of photos on here (2,200+ photos).

Because we kept Gallery2, I went ahead and upgraded to the latest 2.3.1 so that we’ll be ready to upgrade to Gallery 3.0 in the near future. I even showed Tammy how I upgrade the software on this site. First time she’s shown a little interest in that, pretty cool!

Third, I removed the WPG2 plugin that allowed integration from WordPress to Gallery2. This plugin was a HUGE pain in the neck and forced us to stay with the same theme for all these years. You’ll notice if you visit our Buehler Family Photo Gallery that it no longer has the same theme as the main site, I’m keeping it this way so that we can change our main page theme to fit the times. If it is nearing Christmas, we can switch to a Christmas style and get all festive-like for you.

Fourth, all of the old posts were updated to show bigger thumbnails. Since we were forced to update all posts that had images, due to the removal of the WPG2 plugin, we went ahead and made the thumbnails on the posts much bigger. We are now uploading images to posts directly using WordPress’ built in upload/embedding features. This will make switching themes a SNAP. I also removed a lot of old news, outdated information, and irrelevant stuff from here.

Fifth, Tammy is now working on the blog again! She is going through all of our photos from last year to now and preparing them for upload and viewing. Once she is done updating the Photo Gallery, she’ll begin working on adding posts with all of the things we’ve done since the last family update! Many of you have requested new blog updates and now, they are a-commin’!

Sixth, I’ve done a lot of work on this site and during these updates, I accidentally fired off a few misfires from our email notification system. I’m sorry about that. This system is buggy with WordPress 3.0. I emailed the developer to try and join their beta release program to fix it. But from now on, you should see quite a few emails from us with updates over the last year.

Seventh, this all started because I needed a “break” from all the work I’ve been doing. I’ve spent the last two months coding my own website template for Customer Hosting Reviews and then working with a developer to upgrade the site to use the new theme with all of the new features I wanted (quite expensive). I’ve also been working with two content writers to add all new content to the site, the content isn’t perfect, but it works for what I needed. Also, managed to get a Google Streetview type site up that was inspired by Uncle Chuck’s vpike called House Street Views. I have several domains I want to launch with this that goes into niche topics that need street view maps.

And finally, #8 of this long blog update, it hasn’t been posted on here yet but I think we’ve told everyone already, Tammy is pregnant! We’re expecting our new baby sometime around Thanksgiving and we can’t wait! We have yet to buy any baby items, we need a crib, crib set, stroller, car seat, baby clothes, a take home clothing set, and of course, we won’t qualify for any assistance, so we’ll need to stock up on formula, baby diapers, etc. We’ll also need to cover $5,000 that our insurance won’t pay. Nonetheless, this is why I’ve been busting my ass working so hard to try and earn more money to help cover all of this. Top this off with yet another health insurance premium increase letter, it’s all piling up. But I’m keeping up a positive attitude, working hard, and feel great with all that I have accomplished.

Thanks for reading. We love reading blog comments on here, so if you read our new blog updates coming soon, please be sure to comment. We’d sure appreciate it!

I’m not totally sure why but I have a hard time blogging these days! It’s so much easier on facebook with my quick status updates. Are you friends with me? Make sure you are, I update there all of the time! http://www.facebook.com/ScottDaMan
Just remember to block farmville if you don’t play that game, I have a lot of those posts on my wall. I’m addicted to that damn game!

Anyway, what I wanted to post today is all about my health. It’s been the focus of ALL of my attention (other than maybe farmville on facebook, LOL) for the last 5 months now. When I meet up with people I haven’t seen in a while, it’s nice to see them do a double take! Seeing Gary recently has only inspired me to keep going, their entire family had nothing but kind words to say. Gary was most impressed at how well I’ve done. Of course, meeting the family in Mesquite for Aunt Peggy’s birthday was even more motivation to keep going strong.

In September I saw an infomercial for Beachbody’s P90X system. It’s the first infomercial that I felt wasn’t a scam. The people on there have busted their asses and worked hard and got great results. It triggered me to go downstairs to the office and search more, and more, and more! I looked at people on youtube and ordinary people were RAVING about the system.

At the time, I wanted to start doing something after seeing a picture Tammy took of me at the river last year in a life vest. I looked like a damned booey! I was disgusted. I wanted to change but wasn’t quite sure how, I’ve tried many diets that have all failed. After doing all of the research, I knew P90X was my answer. Hard work, no miracle pills, no fads, just hard work, exercise and a complete overhaul of my diet.

The downfall, I was 278 pounds, around 80 pounds overweight, and was in no shape to pass their “fit test” for P90X. I found out they released a system about ten years back called “Power 90″ and many people recommended it to start with. So, I went for it and brought Tammy along for the ride. We’ve been our own  motivation the entire time. Some days I felt like skipping out and she got me up and going and other days, the opposite. A great support system!

Here’s some basic stats for everyone:

Every 30 days Tammy and I took pictures to see our own progress.
09/19/2009 – 278 pounds – Start of Beachbody’s Power 90 program (2 pounds from morbid obesity)
10/14/2009 – 266 pounds – 30 Days of Power 90 Completed
11/16/2009 – 252 pounds – 60 Days of Power 90 Completed
12/17/2009 – 243 pounds – 90 Days of Power 90 Completed – We graduated Power 90!
(We added a few days of workouts here and took an entire week off for Christmas)
12/28/2009 – Start of Beachbody’s P90X system as seen on TV infomercials
01/10/2010 – 239 pounds – No longer obese by BMI (no pics)
01/26/2010 – 234 pounds – 30 Days of P90X completed
02/17/2010 – 228 pounds – 51 Days  of P90X completed (no pics)

50 POUNDS LOST AS OF YESTERDAY!!!

I had to share this occasion with the world. My goal is still to get below 200 with muscle. Then I’ll go and get my loose-fitting wedding ring adjusted. Under 200 pounds is my “normal weight” by BMI standard that doesn’t consider athletic build in its formula. I *still* want to get below 200 just to say I’m 190 something. Oh yes!! Heck, I’m only 28 pounds away!

Of course, the bad part, I’ve been so focused on my health and well being that I’ve put my business on the back burner. The downside of course, we’re broke but happy. LOL. I need to start working after my birthday tomorrow. Hopefully I can get back into working mode. Maybe we can get back out of debt and pay off our huge dental bills too.

Either way, I finish by saying this: Losing 50 pounds 2 days before my birthday is the best birthday present I could ever ask for. Thanks for reading!

This evening I added a new SATA 640GB hard drive to Tammy’s new Dell SX8000 (commonly known as XPS 8000 ) machine and the drive appeared fine in BIOS.

However, when I booted into Windows 7, the normal process of formatting the drive wasn’t working. That is, going into Computer Management then Disk Management. Usually, the unpartitioned drive will appear here. It didn’t! After several reboots, complete shutdowns, nothing worked.

So, taking the advice of others who suggested using a Linux CD to partition the drive, I instead used a Windows 7 setup CD and booted from that. From there I went ahead and partitioned and formatted the drive without issue.

Great! Well, I thought. I booted back into Windows 7 exiting Windows 7 setup CD and discovered the drive still would not appear. Ugh. So the troubleshooting began.

The answer:

Start -> Right Click Computer -> Properties
Device Manager (on left side)
Click the Disk Drives arrow to show the list
Find Your Drive You Installed Here
Right Click on the Drive -> Uninstall
After the SATA HDD disappears, click the Action menu -> Scan For Hardware Changes

This will rescan your system and reinstall your SATA HDD drivers.

After I did this, the formatted drive letters appeared for me under “Computer” because I had already partitioned and formatted the drive in the Windows 7 setup CD. For most others, you’ll just need to go back into Disk Management where you SHOULD discover the drive now where you can partition and setup the drive like normal.

Let me know if this helps.