Category: Article

#EveryStreet Salt Lake City

On December 13th, 2020 I finished my yearlong project of running every street of Salt Lake City. Without a doubt, this has been the most demanding running goal I have ever set for myself (and I ran a 50-miler a few years back…). This project was complete with physical, mental, and logistical challenges that — when thrown in during the year that was so difficult already — tested me in a number of ways.

I won’t bore you with the play-by-play of each run (which, if you have a Strava account, you can trace back all my 2020 runs here) nor give you an exhaustive breakdown of all the interesting things I’ve seen, but I do want to spend a few paragraphs discussing the impact of committing yourself to achieving a goal that seems so far-fetched and, at times, insurmountable by simply performing a series of tasks one day at a time.

It’s tough to put into words what running 994 miles across 118 runs — yet alone all the route planning and map double-checking — meant to me. It’s easy to put up a finished map with all streets marked complete and understand the finished product, but thinking about each individual run or each time I printed off a small portion of the city gives me a better sense of what was required to get there.

And this is so true with respect to all sorts of facets of my life: education, relationships, work, hobbies — you don’t just suddenly arrive at a point of expertise but, rather, through consistent hard work, you eventually just sort-of get there.

So I challenge everyone who happens across this website (whether it be for Number Sense practice material or for running advice) to think of an area of their life that they can practice consistency with and try to better themselves one small step at a time. I promise you, the journey will be way more fulfilling than the celebration at the finish line.

P.S. – If you’d like to read a re-cap of this particular project, you can check out an article that Andy Larsen from the Salt Lake Tribune put together! And if you have any questions about how to pull something similar off, just leave a comment.

Reddit Post // US House of Representatives’ Tax Plan

My Top Reddit Post of All-Time

Funny thing happened earlier this past week: after being a relatively inactive user for the past 9 years, I decided to submit a recent NY Times piece outlining the proposed US House of Representatives’ Tax Plan to one of my favorite subreddits, /r/financialindependence.

Outside of the daily discussion threads, this subreddit’s typical activity is far less than what the 300,000+ subscribes would suggest. So it came as a little bit of a shock that my post garnered so much interest (almost 1000 “upvotes” and just as many comments).

Perusing the comments sections, I helped some people understand the US Tax Code a little bit better and outlined some obvious winners and losers of the proopsed changes. In a nutshell: if your household* taxable income (less your standard pre-tax contributions such as for 401(k) and HSA plans) is around $90,000 — enough to cap out the lowest proposed tax bracket of 12% — , you have children, and you have previously been filing using the standard deduction then, CONGRATULATIONS, you are the biggest winner of the new tax plan.**

As for the losers, if you are a dual-income household who make around $200,000 to $400,000, have children, and have previously heavily itemized, you are the biggest losers and will, most likely, be paying more for taxes. This mostly describes households in high-cost of living areas (California, New York City, etc…) that are traditionally blue-state stalwarts.

Anyways, I highly recommend people who pay taxes educate themselves on how exactly the bulk of the US Tax Code works (if you are a “normal person,” it’s actually not too complicated) and judge for yourself how the proposed changes would affect you.

* This is presuming you are married filing-jointly. If you are an individual, cut the income levels approximately in half for the big winners/losers.

** Note: the top 1% (or more specifically, the top 0.2%) are truly the biggest winners as the estate tax repeal would far exceed any modest benefits the “middle class” would get from the new plan (also the elimination of the Alternative Minimum Tax is a huge benefit to certain wealthy people who make specific types of income).

Boeing Frontiers Article

LMTF Article

Late last month, there was a nice write-up of Little Mountain Test Facility (where I work at) on the Boeing website. Originally, it was scheduled for a December release, however, it was delayed until late-March. As a result, we missed the window for a physical copy release in the Boeing Frontiers Magazine (they moved to online-only in January), but nevertheless it is always great getting exposure for our facility.

Anyways, for those curious at what exactly I do for a living, this article provides some insight. Pictured above is me (far right) doing a mock set-up of an experiment in front of our linear accelerator. As mentioned in a prior post, I’ll be presenting the results of that particular machine’s updated capabilities at this year’s Hardened Electronic and Radiation Technology (HEART) conference next week.