My biggest ally at work are blue lines. If I can get a blue line slowly moving to the left and maybe one of those hourglass cursors up. I can do whatever the hell I want while I wait. I have two anti-spyware programs and an anti-virus that I run almost everyday. When people ask what I'm doing I just wave my hand at my monitor in a manner that both alerts them to my slow blue line and shews them away.

"How long will that take?"
Dunno...