The uptime command tells you the number of processors the users wish they had.
the Load average is the number of jobs wanting to run: a load average of 3.5 would mean that on avarage they wanted 4.5 of the 4 CPUs, great. a load average of 7.5 means they want 4 CPUs more than you own. (rup does an uptime of your subnet)
the sar command can show how many jobs had to wait sar -q shows the average number of waiting jobs and the percentage of time any job was waiting.
I tried to remain child-like, all I acheived was childish.