title: Using "rails runner" for cron jobs is very CPU intensive - alternatives?
body: <p>I'm currently using cron and "rails runner" to execute background jobs.  For the most part these jobs are simple polls "Find the records that are due to receive a reminder email. Send that email."</p>
  
  <p>I've been watching my Amazon EC2 Small instance, and noticed that each time one of these cron job kicks in, the CPU spikes to ~99%.  The teeny tiny little query inside my current job is definitely <em>not</em> responsible.  I'm presuming that the spike is simply due to the effort of loading the full rails environment via "rails runner".</p>
  
  <p>Is there a more CPU efficient way to handle regularly scheduled batch jobs?</p>
  
  <p>P.S.  I know that in the particular example of sending a reminder email at time X in the future, I could delayed_jobs, and simply schedule the job in the future.  Not every possible task fits into the delayed_jobs framework very well though, so I'm looking for a more traditional "cron job" type solution.  Like "rails runner", but without the crazy CPU consequences.</p>