Further more, I took a few days off from blogging, twittering, txt’ing to spend some time with family that was in town. I feel all of us who embrace the social media world need to be reminded from time to time that spending time with our real family is more important that spending time with our virtual families.

Now that my disclaimer is out there, I have a few hours here before I leave to go see the Arizona Cardinals take on the Atlanta Falcons and it gives me time to reflect on 2008. What a year it was for my life. Here is a Harper’s Weekly style summary for everyone.

January – Diane and I Celebrated New Years, by accidentally being allowed into a $200 per person private party at a fine Italian restaurant here in Vegas. (no names, don’t want them to find out).

February – Turned 29, went to see Artie Lang at Mandalay Bay and Diane got to meet him after the show, super cool.

March – Diane and I purchase a house and construction begins.

April – House construction was in full swing, started choosing options for the house.

May – The house started looking like a house and Diane and I already sold almost everything we owned.

June – Selling Source / PartnerWeekly eliminated my position to change their corporate structure.

July – Go to work for Black Diamond Digital Imaging.

August – Closed on the house and hours later on our way to Idaho with VegasGeek for a two day concert. This was one of the most fun trips I have ever taken. Can’t wait to do it again in 2009. Any excuse to wear a cowboy hat.

September – Economy really started to fall apart, but was able to get away and visit my parents in Wyoming. That is always a party.

October – New theme for JakeLudens.com and Diane and I went to a record number of Halloween Parties. Normally I am not one to dress up a lot.

November – Diane and I got engaged! Yeah how crazy is that? I am excited, should probably set a date for the wedding, 2010, 2011?

December – 30 day blog challenge. My parents came to Vegas to see the new house and stay with us for a week. It was great, our first Christmas in the new house and we had all of the family here.

2009 is starting out great, I spent yesterday spending gift cards from Christmas and watching football. Now I am off to see an NFL playoff game in Arizona. I can’t wait to see what 2009 has in store for the bloggers, tweetfreaks, and this crazy life of mine.

I have also been working very hard to update things at Black Diamond Digital. John helped put together a Twitter Meet Up on Friday night and we had a great turn out. Thank you to everyone for making it down and supporting First Friday and the Las Vegas Book Festival. Check out John’s Post.

In an attempt to simplfy my life and to make better content here at JakeLudens.com I will be transfering over some of the content of my other blog FeedingTheBlind.com and slowly phasing that site out for future uses. Not to worry, it will return. For now check out my new page where I will be listing books that I have read that I think others would enjoy. In the next few weeks look for small review snippets for each book listed. I am constantly ready, so please leave a comment on the books page me know any books that you recommend.

I have also updated my blog roll, check out Diane’s Recipes. She has been creating great, low fat, heart healthy foods and getting some great responses over at Recipe Zaar.com

Finally, watch for the closing blog post on Diane’s and My new house. We are finally moved in and have some great finished photos.

If you are over the age of 18, you have most likely seen the incredible amount of tax money that has been taken out of your paychecks. This money has been starting to get disputed by the younger generations who think that it is unfair to pay in to social security because by the time they are at retirement age, inflation and population will wipe out any benefits that they could possibly count on. Futhermore, the cost of insurance and medical treatment is so expensive that even some of the larger corporations are cutting back on benefits or insurance all together.

The only solutions to these concerns in the past few years have been the privatization of retirement savings for the country and the socialization of medical treatment for the country. This got me thinking today. Privitization of the retirment funds of this country has not been accepted because of the concerns that individuals as well as the markets can’t be trusted to sustain the money needed to support the population. And Socialised medicine, we this is the USA, and anything even hinting towards socialism is instantly called Communism and dismissed. So what can the United States do before the majority of the population is too old to work, but too poor to live?

Here is an idea, start a war under false pretenses. This gives a great platform to ship off the youngest population that can vote and hold a job, control their pay and their lives. This takes money out of the private sector of the capitalist society by making sure these individuals are paid not to produce any profits, but only to use their pay to buy taxable items. Granted they can’t spend any of their pay, but their wives and children back home can. This literally takes a large portion of our population out of the consumer pool, but still allows them to feed the beast.

Next to make sure the war is supported by the consumers in the United States, increase the cost of the most popular and most used commodity of all, oil. But wait, this doesn’t encourage spending or does it? The largest fear in the United State is to lose you job when times are “bad”, so the last thing American’s are going to give up is driving to work, regardless of the cost. So in fact isn’t there more being spent? Sure, families are cutting back on the “expensive” brand name foods at the grocery store, but have you ever seen the option for generic gas? Think about the ratio, save 50 cents on canned corn, spend $25 extra dollars on a tank of gas.

So what to do next, I know attack the American Dream. Owning a home is part of the American Dream and an even bigger part of the American Dream is keeping up with the Jones. If the guy across the street has a big house, then everyone on the block needs a big house. This is not a new thing, however in the past there were safe guards against keeping up with the Jones. If you didn’t make enough money to have a house the size of a castle, then you simply didn’t live next to a castle. Even more so there was no way to borrow more money than you could afford to pay back in a reasonable amount of time. Well, now we have seen what happens when that safe guard falls and individuals are allowed to borrow way more than they need or can afford. Now the government magically took control of the 51% of all the mortgage payments for the next 30 years. That is a great way of taxation without representation, pay up because we own your house. Scary.

Finally, we come to the announcement from today. The government now bailed out one of the countries largest insurance companies. Not just bailed them out but gave them enough tax payer’s money to own 80% of the company. That is a quick way to control the cost of medical care, just control the insurance premiums. After all the cost of medical treatment is only high because of the amount of insurance doctors as well as patients have to pay.

I am going to close with one of my favorite George Orwell quotes, I think we all need to take a step back from our own distractions and see what is really going on.

All political thinking for years past has been vitiated in the same way. People can foresee the future only when it coincides with their own wishes, and the most grossly obvious facts can be ignored when they are unwelcome. – George Orwell

This morning on NPR there was a conversation going on about how the housing market colapse and the true effect that forclosed and abandonded houses have on neighborhoods. Once one house falls beyond repair, they said that the property value in a 1/8 mile radius drops, start adding 3, 4 and 5 forclosed and abandoned houses and you get into miles of depressed house values. It is called the broken window effect, and is mentioned a lot in the book The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell.  I read this book a while back and it was a great book and I think it really illustrates what our society is seeing right now. We have hit the tipping point in terms of consumer confidence. But that is obvious. I mean how can you be confident in spending any kind of money if you can’t be sure you will ever earn it back and why would you put it in the bank if the bank is only going to close or be sold off.

Is this the start of out next Great Depression or can out government and large corporations find a way to pull the blinders over our eyes again? It is to the point in our history that the gap between rich and poor is just too large. We are witnessing the natural leveling out of our economy as far as I see it. Today showed how fragile our economy is and we saw how false the country’s most inflated salaries really are. I can only imagine how it would feel to watch your entire nest egg for retirement or for sending your child to college, disappear in a matter of hours, all the while not spending a dime of it.

Sorry big buisness, this one fell on you.

The month started out in a rush, I have a new job that promises to be a lot of fun and work, but I am ready. Diane and I got the keys to the new house on the 7th of this month and after having the keys for only about 20 minutes, we jumped in to John’s car and raced off to Idaho.

John wrote a great recap of that adventure here

My parents have been going to the Sturgis Motorcycle Classic for as long as I have been around and I always knew it was a good time there, I think the Braun Brother’s Reunion could easily become the same type of yearly ritual for us.

Also Diane has posted more photos up on Flickr – Check ‘em out.
First Set
Second Set

Once we got home from the Idaho trip, Diane and I were in full moving mode and were able to move most of our belongings into the house using just our cars. We hired movers to get all the large stuff.

That was the week of August 11th, so now we are finally settled, all the waiting for utility companies and deliveries is over

Apart from that we have been moving forward with expanding Black Diamond Digital Imaging. I am excited to see how great this company is going to be. Check out the website and I will be blogging over there as well.

Finally, now that the house is built and we are moved in, what in the world am I going to blog about?

Maybe one of my other passions – Advertising, Hockey, Football, Books - nah already blog about that, I will think of something.

The house is looking great and they have really made some great progress.

The new flooring went in this last week, it was still covered but I was able to get a few shots.

There isn’t much left for the builders to do, the next thing Diane and I will need to do is finish the back yard, that will be fun.

It looks almost finished from the street.

I have been in contact with a number of great people form the Marketing and Advertising world and look for great things from me in the near future.

I have not really posted much here at JakeLudens.com about anything but the new house that Diane and I are building. Look for that to change starting in the next week. I have been busy finishing up a number of things and getting ready to move in to the new house.

I will also have a full announcement of what is next for me in my career soon.

Please keep the comments coming and I will have plenty for all you advertising buffs to talk about.

I wish PartnerWeekly and The Selling Source the best of luck in the future and thank them for the experience.

I am looking forward to bigger and better things. Watch for new updates to JakeLudens.com, I will be posting my full resume and ways that you can get in touch with me.

Just as we asked the builders were able to move out our fence line and create what will be the perfect back yard.

The entry way is looking great with the custom front door we had installed.

The house was locked up when we got there yesterday, so I hope to get out there this week during the day for some photos of the inside.