Q:

Really high load readings while the server seems idle

I was wondering if any of you encountered such an issue, that the reported load of the server is really high though none of the parameters seems to indicate that its busy at all. I would need to check this again, but I think this only happens after I start passenger. I am on a dedicated virtual host.
Any tips of why is this happening or ideas how to debug this load value? Here is my top reading, I can provide other information if needed.
top - 13:34:38 up 122 days, 19:15,  1 user,  load average: 2.44, 2.02, 1.85
Tasks:  51 total,   4 running,  47 sleeping,   0 stopped,   0 zombie
Cpu(s):  0.0%us,  0.7%sy,  0.0%ni, 99.3%id,  0.0%wa,  0.0%hi,  0.0%si,  0.0%st
Mem:   1048576k total,   797196k used,   251380k free,        0k buffers
Swap:        0k total,        0k used,        0k free,        0k cached

A:

Thank You for Your input, as it turns out the right answer (and the key in my question) turned out to be that I am using a virtual dedicated server. The server had 0.6 of a processor unit (so 1.2Ghz out of 2Ghz Xeon). This caused weird readings in my top and server health monitoring software (new relic rpm called this time 'stolen' in cpu usage graph).
I now updated to a full core VPS and the load is down to its proper value ~0.07. 

