Pure research, I guess. I go, look into something that I don’t know anything about, find out as much as I can about it in a reasonable amount of time — not to be an expert, just to investigate whether or not to pursue it, and then possibly work on implementing a prototype of that technology into The Evil. But it adds up to me spending most of my time reading, surfing, and just thinking.
Truth be told, it feels a lot like loafing around, except maybe the prototype-generation phases. So I vacillate between exultation (DAMN! This is SO COOL!) and guilt (DAMN! I should be doing some real work.).