My scanner was like that once. It still does it now and then, and I'm really not sure why. It just randomly decides, "nope, not going to scan for you today, hahah!"

I think I might know what LJ's problem is. I saw a comment posted in a friend's journal, about how someone had gone on NPR and raved about livejournal. I'm not sure, but I think it could be possible. If we just got a ton of new users and people surfing around... I just hope it mellows out soon, whatever it is. Took me three tries to log in, and each try took a while.