October 27, 2004... October 27, 2004 -- I ended up staying home an extra day today because I still wasn't feeling good enough to go back to work. It's moving in the right direction though -- I'll be ready to leave out again tomorrow morning. I won't know what load I'll have until then.

It rained here a good portion of the day, and it's raining again this evening, a steady, soaking rain. It was heavily overcast all day long. The days are now noticeably shorter. The time will be changing soon back to Standard Time from Daylight Savings Time. That will make it dark pretty much at 5:30 PM.

I have had one of those thin Canon flatbed scanners for about two or three years. The scanner unexpectedly died after functioning perfectly 24 hours prior. I tried it on two computers, and both gave me the same error message. I don't need to scan things often, but when I need to I need to. So I ended up going to the local Circuit City store and buying another one. It seems they manufacture things like printers and scanners with a fairly limited lifespan. When that lifespan is up and the parts wear out, the only real alternative is to replace it with a new unit and toss the old one in the trash. That seems wasteful to me, but what else can you do? Trying to get something like a scanner or printer repaired would frequently cost more than just replacing it with a new unit.
  ¶ 11:08 PM