Windows has always had a built-in portal to the very recent past: Task Manager's CPU usage meter. Task Manager in Windows XP "The CPU number in Task Manager is a moving little obituary for the immediate past," explained former Microsoft engineer Dave Plummer, "Not what happened at the moment that your eyeballs landed on the row." 'Windows sucks,' former Microsoft engineer says, explains how to fix it READ MORE Plummer wrote the original version of Task Manager, back when it was a lean, mean, process-killing machine rather than the considerably chubbier and cuddlier tool of today. He has since led viewers through a tour of the source code , admitting along the way that he left his telephone number in the comments while chasing a strange bug in how CPU numbers were being reported. That bug is the subject of his latest explanation. So how did Task Manager report the CPU percentage? The answer is complicated. Windows had no magical CPU usage value waiting to be read.…