The sentence BranShea cited is not a run-on. It's a lengthy sentence, and could be improved by reducing the clutter, but this would change the tone from a conversational feel to one that's more technical.

Run-on's are more than just sentences with more than one idea. A compound sentence is not a run-on if properly punctuated, though often the meaning is more apparent if broken into multiple sentences. A run-on is a compount sentence where the clauses are not separated by punctuation.

tempus edax rerum