When profiling it can be useful to log the amount of time that is spent in a function. With Python that is super easy to do with decorators.

logtime.py

#!/usr/bin/python

import time
import syslog

def logtime(func):
    def caller(*args, **kwargs):
        stime = time.time()
        ret = func(*args, **kwargs)
        syslog.syslog(
            syslog.LOG_LOCAL2 | syslog.LOG_INFO,
            '%s=%s\n' % (func.__name__, time.time() - stime))
        return ret
    return caller

@logtime
def test_func(arg1, arg2=None):
    print arg1, arg2
    time.sleep(1)

if __name__ == '__main__':
    test_func(1, 2)
logtime will log the time spent in the function to syslog. 
Jul 14 15:05:01 olomai python: test_func=1.00114893913