It is the TIME in ps command.
$ ps ux USER PID %CPU %MEM VSZ RSS TTY STAT START TIME COMMAND user1 991 0.0 2.4 19282 9076 ? S 15:05 0:00 kdeinit: kded user1 780 0.1 1.0 5890 3044 ? S 16:39 0:01 artsd -F 10 -S 40
The TIME in above output does not mean the total time since the process actually started. But it actually means the total time the process was processing. In other words, it is the sum of all durations the process was actually on the processor(s).
It was a true serendipity indeed!
