putterings 399 < 400 > 401 index
doing the occasional on automatic search
He would spend a week out, puttering around on automatic search, reading the seismograph and the samplers and the weather instruments, doing the occasional boring, watching the skies.
blowing into their hands and puttering with coffee pots and samovars, and checking to the west to see how close the line of sunlight had crept.
ex Kim Stanley Robinson, Red Mars (1992) : link
Kim Stanley Robinson (1952 - )
wikipedia : link
and wikipedia page devoted to this and its succeeding volumes in the Mars trilogy : link