I was rewriting one of the (how do I say this?) "bad idea" or "unworkable idea" or "dead end" ideas and saved this scene as a story all by itself. Don't think this is unusual, lots of stories you read have lost a character that didn't advance the story. Or the author deleted characters because there were too many characters in the story.
UPDATE #1: February 2009 - I "salvaged a fragment from the draft and put it on the website in the Sci Fi Folder as I Fought the Spaceship and the Spaceship Won -- Wayne and Roberto and you get to read about their misadventure with the spaceship. It did not further the story I was trying to write.
That's the reason that a writer would take a segment and save it as a short story or make it into a standalone story.
UPDATE #2: May 2010 - I took a very humorous chunk of the old story and started to make it into a short story for the website but something odd happened... It created a better segment of the origial story, so much so, I have continued with the original ideas and outline I first set out last year.
Now I have to find another story to post.