thank you *so much* for that, it's exactly the sort of information I was looking for.

the program is internal, but likely to be repackaged and re-purposed a good many times in the near future, hence my attempts to get it as close to right now, before some new purpose highlights an old oversight.

with the information from that subroutine timer, I would not be surprised if the actual process can be improved in the right directions!

thanks again.