OT: productivity and long computing delays

[Paddy]

Paul Rubin wrote:
> I'm doing something where I frequently but unpredictably (i.e. I can't
> plan for it in advance) hit a snag that requires me to rebuild a large
> project.  The rebuild takes a couple hours.  During that time, I'm
> twiddling my thumbs and/or posting here, i.e. not getting anything
> useful done.  But the delay is not long enough that I can really
> switch to another project for a while.
>
> Anyone got any suggestions?  How do you deal with this?  It could be
> mitigated with a faster computer (I'm using a 1.2 ghz Pentium M) but
> the overall task isn't large enough to justify going out and buying
> one.  Anyway, I did the same build on a 2 ghz Athlon 64 and was
> surprised that the speedup was only 35% or so.  I'd have to get a
> multiprocessor box to obtain really substantial gains.

Read documentation,
Write documentation.
Play Freecell ;-)

- Paddy.