apple core blowhard
After a month, finally got a core shutdown. I was running with an external monitor, with the laptop closed, hoping to reduce slightly the graphics demands. Parallels was on, accessing the web. Time Machine came on and failed to do a backup. And I saw from Activity Monitor that a core had shut down. Everything was slower than molasses.
What to do? I tried blowing into the ventilation grill. And the core came back on! But when I stopped blowing, the core died again. Didn't want to hyperventilate, so I fanned it with a folder until I was able to shut Parallels down.
It seemed like warm air was exhausting from the 123 side of the grill, so I guessed that intake was on the 890 side--having seen no other places for intake. So I concentrated fanning on the 890 side.
OK, now somebody can start selling an accessory fan to keep the MBA cool. (Remember when they made those for the Mac Plus?)