White Noise and background static

I was surprised to see this week that two people that I follow in Blogistan, have described a feeling that I have had for a long time and I've only been recently able to put a name to it.
They have called it "White Noise" or "Background Static" and that exactly how I would put it. I've also likened it to the period of heavy use of a computer. You see, a computer's CPU has only so much capacity to handle calculations. This is commonly called "Cycles" and sometimes rogue programs can steal or hog cycles from the CPU, thereby slowing the computer to a crawl while other process are forced to wait in line for processing from the CPU.
I've felt for a long time like that. My mind has been