Not much time, but I went ahead and checked in both changes for which I sent patches about. Having run python.org on these patches for about a day, and esp. over the new month, I feel that they at least don't make things worse. Performance on python.org has gotten /dramatically/ better. I've yet to see a cpu pegged at 100% for more than about 2 minutes, and load averages look much better now (usually <1 where they were consistantly running in the 6-7 range).

-Barry