Viva...Laundry?

Again, forgive any formatting anomalies. Typing this on my BlackBerry on my way into work.

I can now blame my wife, and tangentally Microsoft, for my hard drive failure. I should probably explain...

I bought Viva Pinata over the summer to give my granddaughter something she could play on my Xbox 360 while she was here. While she did enjoy it, it was my wife who got extremely infatuated with it. She has been playing it nearly non-stop for the last six weeks to the point where she has been shirking her responsibilities even more than usual.

One thing she has been doing is putting the laundry off until the last possible minute so she can squeeze in more playtime. She gets the laundry loads ready late at night and sets them by the door so they can be started in the morning. My computer is also by the door. I keep it there because it is cooler than the rest of the house and has great airflow. The clever ones out there know where this is going.

I had an MSDN download going last night so I left my machine on when I went to bed. When I got up this morning, my PC was off. Since I didn't have it set up to automatically shut down, I immediately got worried and restarted my computer to check for damage.

Everything looked fine, but the fans sounded like they were working overtime so I took a peek down at the tower.

Laundry from the overflowing laundry basket had blocked all of the fan ports. Within ten seconds of pulling the clothes away, the fan volume level returned to normal.

I am going to have to move my PC tonight to keep this from happening again. I am also going to have to stock up on non-perishable food. My wife bought Viva Pinata 2 and wants to start it shortly...no telling what will fall through the cracks then.