Wow, this thread has taken on a life of it's own. Just as an update, I'm done with disc brakes. It's a long story, but I got myself a a Kona Jake instead. Now I have cantilever brakes, and they suck about as bad as my disc brakes, but at least I can mount normal fenders and racks now (and my trailer hitch), the new bike is substantially lighter, and at some point I'll upgrade the stock cantis to hopefully get stopping power I'll be comfortable with (or maybe just get a smaller transverse cable).

If you want a bit of the long story, the bike shop I bought my Norco CCX3 from is actually returning my bike and the rest of their stock to Norco. The owner said he's not happy with the mounting tabs on the front fork (it made getting the pads adjusted properly nearly impossible). So, it totally may be that discs _are_ awesome, but there were some issues with that bike that made adjusting them impossible. Regardless, I'm going to stick to rim brakes for the time being.