title: Ruby long running process to react to queue events
body: <p>I have a rails 3 app that writes certain events to a queue.</p>
  
  <p>Now on the server I want to create a service that polls the queue every x seconds, and performs other tasks on a scheduled basis.</p>
  
  <p>Other than creating a ruby script and running it via a cron job, are there other alternatives that are stable?</p>