problems with leaving cpu on all night

[William Stephens]

Hello,

When I installed Breezy 3 months ago I always shutdown the computer
every night.  Now, I have the opportunity to leave my computer on
indefinitely but have been having problems.  After only one night of
being on, the computer is running so slow I can hardly restart it in
gnome.  When getting back on computer I would look at the system monitor
and notice that python was taking up 60% cpu resources....I would also
notice that python has puzzle piece icon by it and I installed desklets
with the same puzzle piece icon that would not show up after the
computer was on for 24 hours....

I'm a newbie and was wonder if desklets were closely related to python
and why after 24 hours do I have to restart the computer and python
working so hard.  My experience so far with linux is that the OS
actually prefers not restarting so much. Help please!

William S.