write load

$ uptime
 01:55:41 up 76 days, 14:44,  3 users,  load average: 0.32, 0.74, 0.69

$ free
             total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
Mem:       8168412    6478144    1690268          0     149076     412788
-/+ buffers/cache:    5916280    2252132
Swap:      2040244     327144    1713100

$ dd if=/dev/zero of=`mktemp` bs=1MB count=1024
1024+0 records in
1024+0 records out
1024000000 bytes (1.0 GB) copied, 1.10787 seconds, 924 MB/s

$ uptime
 01:56:24 up 76 days, 14:44,  3 users,  load average: 0.32, 0.69, 0.68

$ free
             total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
Mem:       8168412    7523632     644780          0     150056    1412820
-/+ buffers/cache:    5960756    2207656
Swap:      2040244     327144    1713100

$ dd if=/dev/zero of=`mktemp` bs=1MB count=1024
1024+0 records in
1024+0 records out
1024000000 bytes (1.0 GB) copied, 24.6836 seconds, 41.5 MB/s

$ uptime
 01:56:50 up 76 days, 14:45,  3 users,  load average: 2.46, 1.17, 0.83

$ /usr/bin/time rm /tmp/tmp.*
0.00user 0.45system 0:04.01elapsed 11%CPU (0avgtext+0avgdata 0maxresident)k
0inputs+0outputs (0major+160minor)pagefaults 0swaps

$ uptime
 01:57:22 up 76 days, 14:45,  3 users,  load average: 3.74, 1.59, 0.98

$ free
             total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
Mem:       8168412    6134084    2034328          0      39552     149588
-/+ buffers/cache:    5944944    2223468
Swap:      2040244     327144    1713100