Currently the WiredTigerCheckpointThread sleeps for 'syncdelay' seconds. If the 'syncdelay' is changed at runtime, the WiredTigerCheckpointThread will continue to use the previous setting until it expires. So, if a user has the default of 60 seconds, then runs the setParameter cmd to change 'syncdelay' to to 5 seconds, the server won't respond to the new value of 5 for 60 seconds. This test does just that, and finishes testing before the checkpoint thread even sees the new 5 value (note, this is a really old test that doesn't matter much).