threads like this always get me scared that my 60 gb PS3 will crap out on me...had it since oct 07'

Weird, I've never gotten a yellow light, nor have any of my friends gotten one. This is over the past 5 years or so since launch. Maybe we are all just lucky? Or it is a very rare occurance for the YLOD to happen? I mean, I know the fail % is extremely low. It seems so rare that you hear about this. Seems like I read online about 1 every couple of months... That's with over 50 million PS3's out there in the world. I'm sorry to hear this happened. And at such a horrible time. On the bright side, the world didn't end.... and you will be gaming again soon! 

yes and no

Yes it's in that spot

no it's not that actual one because these guys attached a black and blank label onto the spot where that baby is, but didn't put anything on it to say "warranty" or anything, I saw it there and had no idea what it was, I assumed it was a sticker they left there by accident so I took it off, only to see the word "void" staring back at me over and over again.

yay!!!! I called GAME, they were pretty pissed I took off the sticker but she said as long as the serial number sticker was still on, I was okay...just. ^_^ I'm happy again...for now ¬_¬

Awesome! So happy for you mate :)

It depends upon usage, maintenance and also luck, as in whether you got a good hardware sample or not.

My original 60GB died after anywhere between 6-8k hours which included about a 6 month period of 24/7 operation (Folding@Home when not in active use). I've had the same SCE refurb replacement running since Jan 2008.

While I never tore the original console apart, I did use compressed air to blow about 2 years worth of dust from the casing when I noticed the fans were running louder than usual (fair amount of internal dust blew out despite being wiped clean externally on a regular basis). The console went YLoD less than two months later.

So fan noise is the big hint as to whether your console is running hotter than it should be. If it's running hotter, it either has a fair amount of dust clogging up the heat sink/fan assembly or the thermal paste is dried out, or both.

Word of advice: don't use compressed air; use a vacuume on the vents. While compressed air works in removing most of the dust from the console without disassembling it, you may end up blowing some of it into the recesses between high operating temp components that could do more damage than good. 

I did a breakdown on my refurb model to clean it out and replace the factory thermal paste (which was still wet, ie. good) with AS5. I noticed the heatsink had a 19 blade fan from the factory for higher airflow than the 15 blade unit most 60 GB models shipped with. The 19 blade fan is a common upgrade for those who do service on their own consoles.