how much RAM does Ubuntu need to sleep?

[Me - Atlantic]

[snip]
> Can you figure out which python program this is? It's something running
> under your user account... I can't imagine what it could be... I haven't
> observed this on my laptop.
gnome terminal, evolution, firestarter, gdesklet for disk, ram, and eth0
are the only programs running in gnome (all minimized to the tray at the
time when this occurs).
No other programs are running (that I'm aware of).  I really appreciate
the input, since it's confusing to me as to why this is happening.

Here is the full list from top...

 7691 john      15   0 1403m 789m 4492 S 36.6 78.1 578:16.89 python
 7633 root      15   0 56480  38m 3440 S  2.7  3.8  29:28.18 firestarter
 6953 root      15   0  149m  15m 5396 S  2.3  1.5 478:20.54 Xorg
  119 root      15   0     0    0    0 S  0.3  0.0   0:06.08 kswapd0
 7624 john      15   0 31720 5320 3680 S  0.3  0.5   0:07.98
gnome-terminal
    1 root      16   0  1556  304  276 S  0.0  0.0   0:01.56 init
    2 root      34  19     0    0    0 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.00 ksoftirqd/0
    3 root      10  -5     0    0    0 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.15 events/0
    4 root      16  -5     0    0    0 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.01 khelper
    5 root      10  -5     0    0    0 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.00 kthread
    7 root      20  -5     0    0    0 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.00 kacpid
   89 root      10  -5     0    0    0 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.43 kblockd/0
  120 root      19  -5     0    0    0 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.00 aio/0
  705 root      15   0     0    0    0 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.00 kseriod
 1866 root      15   0     0    0    0 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.00 khubd
 3006 root      15   0     0    0    0 S  0.0  0.0   0:03.16 kjournald
 3132 root      19  -4  1664  252  248 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.09 udevd
 4812 root      25   0     0    0    0 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.00
shpchpd_event
 6420 root      16   0  1816  288  284 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.00 acpid
 6452 root      16   0  1556  140  140 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.07 dd
 6454 klog      16   0  2456  280  276 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.10 klogd
 6467 messageb  16   0  2160  280  276 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.01 dbus-daemon
 6480 hal       16   0  5080 1044  768 S  0.0  0.1   0:00.87 hald
 6485 hal       19   0  1864  212  208 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.00
hald-addon-acpi
 6496 hal       16   0  1872  264  248 S  0.0  0.0   0:15.33
hald-addon-stor
 6880 root      16   0 10628  640  636 S  0.0  0.1   0:00.00 gdm
 6885 root      15   0 10960  788  784 S  0.0  0.1   0:00.02 gdm
 6986 hplip     16   0 12620  300  296 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.00 hpiod
 6989 hplip     16   0  8856 1316 1020 S  0.0  0.1   0:04.31 python
 7037 clamav    19   0 38100  424  420 S  0.0  0.0   0:07.52 clamd
 7090 clamav    16   0  4212  544  460 S  0.0  0.1   0:00.12 freshclam