Cleaning your computer

Good morning.
Yesterday was quite productive. After picking up scrips, and groceries, we spent the rest of the day inside and warm. Craig spent most of the day on year end bookkeeping, 1099's, and laundry, I did some re-potting of some houseplants, (bigger pots) and did my annual computer cleaning.
Now most of you know about cleaning up the hard drive by emptying your recycle bin, deleting temp files and defraging. (you do de-frag regularly right?)
But if your computer is a year old or older like mine, (8 years old running XP) You need to clean the inside too!

Here's my big tower. They sure made them huge back then didn't they?
Now this one's easy to clean. The side just pops off.

Now take a close look at the front and back vents ICK!

So you need to get a can of compressed air and blow everything. Blow out the vents, blow off the cards, everything. Then vacuum out the stuff that fell to the bottom.

Now my tower has 3 fans, can you find them all? Obviously the one right out in front cooling the main board, but the red card(my graphics card) has on on the bottom, and the big box at the top left has one on the bottom.They also need to be cleared of dust. Just make sure you hold the fan blades. They're designed to run at a certain speed, and you can damage them if they spin out of control. Oh and the most important thing. Unplug the computer! And make sure your grounded before you touch any of the innards.
There, all nice and clean and hopefully will last another year.

And for dinner, Craig cooked a ham,(he will only buy the type with a bone in it, say that's real ham) with mashed potatoes and fried cabbage. Very good!