>Thomas --
>
>Thanks for the detailed explanation, which I plan on following when time permits (right now is never a good time, is it?)

I have always a list of a few interesting topics I want to play with - and during a long day of work we all goof off one way or the other<g>. One of my ways is to play on these topics only touching barely my current task (sometimes creating helpers / builders, enhancing the code through refactoring and so on, but so far from current "crunch" tasks I view it as relax time), but always with the understanding that I can bill for the goof-H if it helps the project. This directs me into "playing" at least one H per day, and the chance of billing makes me tenacious <g>.

have fun

thomas