I dropped to a Terminal window and found the following really helped.
top -o cpu -O +rsize -s 5 -n 20
Whatever process floated to the top I killed. The first was an old wine process that should have already been gone. Another was a screen process that I was using to open a com port for configuring a wireless router. Neither were needed and killing both immediately helped.
My fan has quit running constantly, the processor is cooling down and I gained an hour of battery life in 5 minutes.
