2021 Website Update

Hey everyone — it’s been a while!

Just wanted to let everyone know that 2021 has been a pretty crazy year for me thus far. My running every street in Salt Lake City project got picked it by a lot of news outlets and it’s been a wild ride with interviews, on-camera filming, and articles. Additionally, I’ve also done a handful of other running projects that have garnered a lot of press as well (one particularly involving the Utah Jazz and their NBA Playoff run). Finally, I started an Instagram Account that has become semi-popular where I post about some of my zany runs as well as unique things I see in and around Salt Lake City. It’s [at]slsees on Instagram, if you are interested.

As a result, I’ve had to put a lot of plans on the back-burner but things seem to be subsiding now so I’m ready to get back into the swing of things.

Here are some of my near-term plans:

  1. I’ll make a mega-post about all the articles, maps, news stories, etc… from my recent running exploits.
  2. I’ve bought some sound equipment to better record my Youtube Videos with respect to detailing Number Sense Tricks. I posted a few and it generated a healthy response so I want to continue it.
  3. I plan on updating the database of questions for my Auto-Generating Number Sense Exams (both High School and Middle School) with the 2020-2021 problems. If you have any other practice exams from the past few years, feel free to e-mail me at:
  4. As always, if you ever run into any questions with how to solve a problem or are trying to figure out a trick, you can e-mail me at the above address as well.

Looking forward to the remainder of this year! Yay for 2021!

#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.

2018 Year-End Re-Cap + 2019 Goals

Another year down means another year re-evaluating my goals and coming up with a new list of things that I would like to accomplish this upcoming year.

To wrap up 2018 in a sentence: being a parent is hard! My daughter was one-year old for most of the year which opened up a whole batch of time constraints I never could have planned for. For one, she went from crawling around to running (and dancing!) everywhere. Just keeping up with her led me to get the majority of my 10,000 daily steps in. Pretty much anytime she wasn’t asleep  my time has been 100% devoted to her which is pretty great but not conducive to accomplishing some of the goals I had planned from last year. That’s OK though, as I think I’ve learned to manage my time better around her, so here’s to hoping that 2019 is full of personal milestones!

Professional Achievements

  • Was issued our site’s second patent and have a third one in development that (hopefully) gets written-up this year.
  • Because an IEEE Senior Member, having accumulated 10 years of experience, detailing professional growth over the last 5 years.
  • Led our radiation test team to one of the busiest years (both, in terms of schedule and revenue) since I have joined the site eight years ago.
  • Concluded a sizeable contract that involved a tremendous amount of teamwork and effort in order to get it completed on time.

Personal (+ Family) Achievements

  • Hit over 50,000 downloads of my Number Sense material in October — and just checked it earlier today and have eclipsed the 80,000 download mark (!!)
  • Completed a revision of my widely popular Number Sense manual and added several dozen pages of new material.
  • Although I feel well short of my 1,000 mile goal, I ran for 376 miles across 70 active days (my schedule, both at home and at work, got immensely busy starting in June).
  • Helped throw a successful 2-year old birthday party at our house and had a wonderful year watching my daughter grow up!
  • Had two great vacations with both sides of my family that resulted in some epic family photo sessions.

Where I Fell Short

  • Still haven’t taken the Project Management Professional (PMP) Exam (ugh!) — I’m currently re-evaluating whether I want to even try for it now or not…
  • Did not read as many books as I set out to rad. I wanted to shoot for 2 per month (24 total), but wound up reading 16. As a result, I’ve augmented my reading goals for this year.
  • Feel incredibly flat with my math reading. I did get through some books (like Paul Zeitz’s The Art and Craft of Problem Solving), but overall I was very underwhelming.
  • Although I’ve made incredible leaps with regards to time management, I can always improve (see: this year’s goals).

I took 2018 as a re-calibration of my expectations. Although my goals seem to remain roughly the same for this year, I think I’ve developed a better mindset on how to actually workup and execute them. So without further ado, here is my 2019 list:

  • Run 1,000 miles. I’m off to a good start so far: 3 weeks in and 63.0 miles down! I need to average about 2.75 miles a day which is totally do-able. I’ve signed up for the Salt Lake City marathon and have a stretch goal of completing a 100-miler by the end of the year.
  • Read 20 books. For this year, I’m going to shorten the number and focus more on quality and reading the types of books I personally find enjoyable. I’ve already rolled through Naked Statistics and am half-way through The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable, so I’m off to a good start there, too.
  • Keep up better with the website. I’ll admit it, sometimes sitting down on my computer and hashing out a post — regardless of length — is a bit of a slog. For 2019, I want to write-up at least 1 post a month and not just be pigeonholed into discussing what’s happening my life. I want to actually do more projects and report back on those findings. I’ve gotten a lot of great feedback from my Number Sense material and I want to expand by doing short instructional videos for each of the tricks.
  • Take my scheduling to the next level. Move from effectively planning to actually executing the majority of the tasks I have planned.
  • Do one thing around the house every day. Pretty self-explanatory!

And that’s it! As usual (in order to combat the planning fallacy), I’ve made a small number of goals that I can break into accomplishable sub-pieces rather easily.

Here’s hoping that 2019 turns out to be just as productive as some of my past years!

Patent Issued // Beam Diffuser Apparatus for Particle Accelerator Applications

Received word yesterday that the US Patent Office approved my team’s second patent application in a little under a calendar year (here is a link to our first patent, if you’re interested).

If you want further details, you can do a US Patent search for Patent #10,062,468 or just click this link here (note: might not work on mobile).

I suggest looking at the <Images> tab so that you can see some drawings of the invention as well as some further explanation of what it does. Basically, our team implemented an automated beam diffuser and diagnostic assembly to better increase our work efficiency. It has significantly increased the number of radiation exposures we can produce in a given test week and has allowed for more throughput when it comes to component-level testing. I’m very proud of this accomplishment and my team!

2018 Goals // Update

In an effort to combat the planning fallacy, I went into 2018 with only a handful of goals (which are outlined at the end of my 2017 re-cap) in order to make achieving them much more likely. Now that we are about one-third done with the year, I thought I would give a status update.

Goal 1: Read 2 Books of Month. So far, I’ve kept pace with this goal and have completed 9 books. Here is a short recap with a Siskel and Ebert thumbs up/down review (note: you should be able to find all these books from your local library).

Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer: A first-hand re-telling of a mid-nineties Everest disaster that claimed 8 lives when an abrupt change of weather caught several expeditions off-guard. What fascinated me most about this book was the in-depth look at the logistics of climbing Everest (from selecting the gear to navigating the  route to the ins-and-outs of high-altitude acclimation). Additionally, Krakauer approaches the retelling of the disaster in a matter-of-fact, journalistic way that leaves you in awe how any rational person would willingly choose to attempt the climb (in fact, Krakauer mentions that in order to try the climb you probably are a little crazy to begin with…). <Thumbs Up>

The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat by Oliver Sacks: Breakout novel of the famed — and recently deceased — neurologist Oliver Sacks. The novel itself is composed of a series of interesting medical cases detailing some of the most extreme behaviors due to brain abnormalities (either through accidents, drugs, or other measures). Each vignette is interesting on its own and most provide some sort of insight into our daily behaviors. Of particular personal interest was the story of “The Twins” who, despite their significant mental deficiencies, could calculate large prime numbers. <Thumbs  Up>

Welcome to the Club by Raquel D’Apice: A humorous look at “100 Parenting Milestones” that every parent can relate to. Ranging from the significant (“First Time You Hold Your Baby”) to the trivial (“First Time You Hold Your Baby Over Your Head and He Vomits All Over You”), each milestone is a hoot to read and, more times than not, is something that, if you are a parent, you have truly experienced. <Thumbs Up for Current Parents>

A Happy Death by Albert Camus: A precursor to Camus’s The Stranger, this book seems more ripped from a sketchbook than a finished project. Although I appreciate the parallels with my quest towards Financial Independence (after all, what could make people more happy than stripping away their dependency on money — albeit, I’d choose a better way than murder!), overall, I found the book lacking in impact. <Thumbs Down>

Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris: This was surprisingly the first David Sedaris book I’ve ever read and I found it to be a delight. Similar to The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, this book is a collect of stories loosely centered around two autobiographical eras: Sedaris’s youth and his move to France during adulthood. Each story seems to be more hilarious than the previous (with my personal favorite being his fascination with finding the French translations of some very specific words about anatomy) and, if you like witty dialog, you’re sure to like this book. <Thumbs Up>

What Do You Care What Other People Think by Richard Feynman: I liked famed physicist’s Richard Feynman’s previous book Surely You’re Joking Mr. Feynman a lot so I figured I’d give this one a try. Let me just say that if you are expecting a sequel you are going to be sorely disappointed. There are some interesting stories but they are few and far between. The majority of the book deals with Feynman’s work on determining the root cause of the Space Shuttle Challenger’s mid-air explosion which is very long-winded and filled with pointless conversations about minutia that don’t amount to much. (Tl;dr: the O-ring became misshapen due to the low temperature at launch which led to a faulty seal). <Thumbs Down>

The Sebastopol Sketches by Leo Tolstoy: Although the Introduction was a bit of a snooze fest, the actual writings of Tolstoy chronicling the Siege of Sebastopol during the Crimean War of the 1850s was surprisingly riveting. Detailing three distinct parts during the siege (December 1854, May 1855, and August 1855), Tolstoy goes from hyper-patriotism regarding the conflict to utter-despondency, questioning the whole point of the war. <Thumbs Up>

Despair by Vladimir Nabokov: Despair is probably one of Nabokov’s most straight-forward, plot-driven novel that he wrote. Centered around a bizarre case of insurance fraud, the novel is a fictional first person retelling (albeit highly biased narration) of a murder-gone-wrong. The book is pretty gripping (the planning and orchestration of the deed leaves you wondering how things could go so wrong!) and has an unusual ending. <Thumbs Up>

Mary by Vladimir Nabokov: Nabokov’s first novel is more like a short story chronicling a coincidental love triangle. What I like most about Nabokov is his inventive and descriptive language — and although his first novel possesses some of these features, it’s certainly better in later works (with my personal favorite being Ada or Ardor). <Thumbs Down -unless you are a Nabokov fanboy like myself>

Goal 2: Run 1000 miles: Definitely have fallen demonstrably short of this goal. The math works out that I should have logged about 295 miles so far, but my Strava shows I’ve only ran a total of 117 miles — a discrepancy of 178 miles! Part of this is due to my re-aggravating my groin injury earlier in the year, but it’s mostly due to my inability to find time to go out for a run. Recently, I’ve picked up the pace a little (running about 41 miles so far in April), but 1000 total miles by the end of the year might be a little out of reach.

Goal 3: Better Time Management: This is definitely not a S.M.A.R.T. Goal as it’s difficult to measure, but I feel like I’ve done a much better job this year. I keep a active note on my phone highlighting my weekly to-do list and recently every Sunday I physically sketch out the week ahead on a printed calendar that gives me a better idea of my available time for each day. I’d give myself a solid “B” grade when it came to improving my time management skills.

Goal 4 (Added): Math Practice: Came to this goal a little late to include in my year-end wrap-up post, but I wanted to become a better math test writer (either through my work with Number Sense or through other, more challenging, competitions). I’ve done a fair amount of work on improving my Number Sense Manual and have begun reviewing some math problem solving books I purchased long ago during my competition days in order to give me guidance (and inspiration!) for my own test writing. Currently, I am engrossed in Paul Zeitz’s The Art and Craft of Problem Solving which is a good book for any aspiring math competitors out there.

Well that about does it! Will check back in over the summer to detail my progress — after all, it has been shown in academic research that making public declarations of your goals (and subsequent progress reports) leads to higher probability that you will achieve them!

Number Sense Manual // Revision A

Happy to announce I’ve finally completed the revision to the Number Sense Tricks Manual I originally made a little over ten years ago. Here is the direct download link (you can also get it from my webpage here).

I cleaned up a lot of the LaTeX programming and split up each section into it’s own .tex file making it a lot easier to compile individual sections. I also made the .pdf a lot more navigable by adding referencing and a few hyperlinks to my free Middle and High School practice exams.  Additionally, I double-checked the question/answer pairing and corrected a fair number of problems. Finally, I added about two dozen more tricks that will help with 3rd and 4th column questions on more recent exams which you can find in Section 4 of the manual.

I wanted to get this version out ASAP to help students with their upcoming UIL regional/state meets. Over the summer, I plan on adding a substantial amount of practice problems to each section and doing another run through to make sure I didn’t miss any commonly tested topics. Hope this material is helpful to you!

Financial Independence // Mr. Money Mustache Favorites

I haven’t really talked about it much on this site, but I am a strong proponent of the idea of Financial Independence and the notion of retiring early (and by retirement, I don’t necessarily mean sitting on the beach sipping Mai Tai’s all day — more of an idea that you can choose what you want to do and not be beholden to “the man” for a paycheck).

Anyways, one of the most popular of the Financial Independence websites around is Mr. Money Mustache — a part-financial, part-self-help site of Longmont, Colorado resident Pete Adeney (you can read the story of his path to retirement in his early 30s from his post here). Mr. Money Mustache’s tone is definitely direct and to-the-point, but his message is clear and easily understandable to all: spend less than you earn (preferably by large margins), religiously avoid debt (with the possible exception of a mortgage), and save whatever the surplus is in investments which pay a return that will, eventually, cover your modest expenses. Oh yeah, and ditch you car and ride your bike to most places.

I’ve been reading his blog for a few years now — starting from the very beginning of his 400+ posts — and just this past week, I finally got all caught up. Oftentimes, I found myself e-mailing particularly useful posts to myself, amassing a library of about 40 of my favorite reads. They detail topics ranging from discussions on expenses, explanations of investment strategies, and storytelling of poignant life lessons. Below are links to my favorites, categorized by theme.

Reducing Expenses
Free Yourself From Having to Buy People Gifts
Giving Experiences Rather than Things
Great Ideas for (Nearly) Free Toys for Kids
Psychological Effect of New Things
On the Reduction of Cleaning
Changing Mobile Phone Service Plans
AWD Does Not Make You Safer

Generating Income
Culling Possessions and Selling Them Online
Sunk Cost Effect: How If You Wouldn’t Buy It, Sell It

Home Purchase and Improvement
How to Buy a House
How to Sell Your House
The Power of Not Having a Mortgage
On the Use of Air Conditioning
Getting Started with Carpentry
The Efficiency and Savings of Having a Metal Roof

Investment/Market Explanations
Tracking Price to Expense Ratios
Ways to Get Into Retirement Accounts Penalty-Free
Explanation of Managed Payout Funds
Thoughts on Market Cycles with Links to jlcollinsnh Stock Series
Handy Tool to View Market Returns Over Time
Calculating Your Net Worth and Savings Rate
Creative Ways of Giving Money

Life Lessons
The Value of Hard Work
Becoming an Efficient Person
To Achieve Greatness, You Must First Acknowledge that you Suck
Thoughts on How Amazing Current Life Is
If Everyone Followed Financial Independence Principles
The Power of a Reducing your News Consumption
Your Circles of Concern and Control
Why We are Irrational Consumers
Life is Not a Contest
Having Kids: Do Whatever Is Right for You
Getting Your Brain Back, Post-Retirement
What MMM is Teaching His Kid About Money
How Your 20s is the Best Time to Develop Financial Independence Habits
Thoughts on Education
2016 Talk at the World Domination Summit
Money and Confidence are Interchangeable

I know these are a lot of posts, but it’s only a sliver of what you can find on the site. By far, the most helpful ones to consider are the Life Lessons. Becoming Financial Independent is a rewarding journey that allows you to focus in on what really is important to you. For me, time spent with my daughter and wife are leaps and bounds more valuable than time spent in the office: why shouldn’t I try my hardest now to make that an actuality? A by-product of striving for a low consumption life also has the added effect of being great for the world, both from a moral and ecological perspective. Anyways, just some things to consider when evaluating your life and what you want to accomplish with your short time spent on Earth!

2017 Re-Cap

Following in the footsteps of my year-end summary from last year, here is a list of some of my accomplishments as well as my shortcomings from 2017. Taking time to self reflect on major milestones is important to track where you’ve been as well as where you want to go. As nice as it would be to accomplishment everything that you set out for in a give year, life happens. With that in mind, these sort of lists aren’t necessarily chronicling “successes” and “failures” as they are showing what your real priorities are within the past year and how you can adjust them for the future if you find that your aspirations are out-of-sync with your actualities.

Professional Achievements

  • Received our site’s first patent concerning my team’s work on updating our facility’s linear accelerator.
  • Submitted a second patent concerning an unrelated efficiency our team implemented on our linear accelerator.
  • Presented at the HEART conference this year concerning the capabilities of our radiation test stands.
  • Helped spearhead an effort securing a high value, long-term contract (apologies for the vagueness…).
  • Became laboratory lead engineer (where else… the linear accelerator group!) and gained more first-time customers than I’ve seen since joining the site.
  • Completed all work efforts to the facility’s and customer’s satisfaction — with numerous highly regarded customer reviews.
  • Personally recognized at the division level for all of my efforts.
  • Submitted application to become a Senior Member of IEEE, having accumulated 10 years of experience and detailing professional growth over the last 5 years

Personal (+ Family!) Achievements

Where I Came Up Short (a lot of areas! — because having a child is tough!)

  • Still have not taken the Project Management Professional (PMP) Exam and receive certification which complemented some of my MBA coursework — will DEFINITELY accomplish this year since this has been on the list for two years now.
  • Did not become certified National Instruments LabVIEW Developer — however, I don’t think this is a priority anymore, so I’ll scrub it for next year.
  • Did not read as many books as I would prefer. (As an aside: highly recommend newly minted Nobel Laureate Richard Thaler’s book Nudge — at least the first half where he explains sources of personal biases). I’m setting a goal of 24 books for 2018.
  • Did not actually run a lot of miles last year (282, to be exact). After my 50 mile race, I kind-of slacked for a few months. When I tried to get back into the swing of things, I suffered a pulled groin muscle that sidelined me for most of fall. I’m setting a goal of 1,000 miles in 2018.
  • Kind-of sucked with time management in 2017. Yes, having a kid is part of it — and I didn’t fully appreciate that part of it until Eleanor started to crawl — but, overall, I had an incredibly busy work year that bled into my free-time a lot. My goal is letting myself be OK with better allocating work amongst my team as well as to getting myself more on a schedule.

Anyways, here’s to a very action-packed 2017 and the hope that 2018 will be just as fulfilling!

Website // Quick One-Year Analysis

Can’t believe I’ve had this website up and running for a full year now! With the help of Google Analytics, I’ve been looking at plots of different traffic data and I thought I would share with you two that are most telling.

This first shows a plot of unique website users since last November, while the second shows unique downloads (mostly of the .pdfs of my Number Sense practice materials) during the same time period. (Note: I only have been keeping track of that information since mid-July — shout-out to my buddy Jerod for helping me out with that.)

Unique Users 2017

Unique Downloads 2017

As you can see, the exponential growth is pretty evident which validates what I’ve thought all along: students and teachers are thirsty for free practice material to help their students succeed in STEM-fields.

Anyway, I plan on helping out where I can in the coming years and have some exciting things I want to put together! Here’s to another fruitful year!

30 Day Challenge // Part 1

Was inspired by a recent TED talk I heard concerning challenging yourself to do something new every day for thirty consecutive days. Basically, it’s a behavioral modification technique that is rooted in the idea that in order to develop a new habit you need about a month’s time of doing it continuously. If you really wish that you could stop biting your fingernails — go a month with biting them and, odds are, the behavior will stick.

For my first set of thirty day challenges, I simply wanted to go without mindless surfing, so I axed out Facebook and Reddit completely from my life. Additionally, I also wanted to give either my dog or baby a walk around the neighborhood because it is something I love to do but oftentimes — whether through fatigue or scheduling — I hadn’t been able to do consistently.

Well, with August in the books I’m here to report that I almost completely kept to my two goals! I successfully didn’t check Facebook or Reddit for the whole month and I only missed three days of walking due to inclement weather — so I’ll chalk that up as a success as well. I definitely can see both of these new habits sticking and plan on brainstorming a complete set of challenges I want to do and start implementing them on a monthly basis, two-at-a-time.