"You have been idle" message appears right after starting a timer every time

[GoogleCodeExporter]

What steps will reproduce the problem?
1. Start screen sharing from home to my work computer
2. Start a timer in time tracker on my work computer

What is the expected output? What do you see instead?
Expected: Timer counts up while I'm working.
Instead: About 1-2 seconds after starting the timer, the "You have been idle" 
message appears and the timer stops.

What version of the product are you using? On what operating system?  Intel
or PPC computer?
1.3.12
10.7.5
Intel

Please provide any additional information below.
I rarely work from home, but had to today to meet the plumber.  I'm trying to 
log my time, but keep running into this problem.

Original issue reported on code.google.com by [email protected] on 11 Jan 2013 at 9:27