hi again skibumdog. I don't personaly practice scales or box patterns. I prefer to play music so I play over simple chord progressions and use chord fragments and I guess you could call them scale fragments,though they are just the right notes to fit around the chord tones, if you needed to name it. Kirk has some free dropped D lessons on his site
Plane Talk you might find helpful. His plane talk method really helps me find my way around the neck so I can get to notes I want. Don't mean to sound like an add, it just worked really well for me. I am sure other players here have practice methods that work equaly for them.
allthumbs