Flash and Drives

The word "Flash" is something of a misnomer when connected with "drive."  
     Last fall I got a cute little blue and silver flash drive in my goodie bag at a writers' retreat. I’d been saving mine for a worthy project, and last night I found one. After I copied stuff onto it from my desktop, my Macbook Air wouldn’t even acknowledge its existence. Furthermore when I removed it from the USB port, my whole Documents file was empty!!! I restored old files up through this March with an old red plastic flash drive and wasn’t quite as unhappy. 

     On that note, I went to bed. 

     This morning I determined to nail the sucker! “Something” probably happened when I tried to “restore” backups from my desktop’s Time Machine’s Seagate drive onto the Air last Sunday--as a way of moving files. There is a neat and elegant way to do it that I couldn’t remember and ended up throwing up my hands. After futzing for 3/4 hr. I determined that the “new” blue and silver drive was a dud. Neither computer would admit to its existence. I tried using Disk Utility/Verify Disk—nada. The old cheapo red flash drive works like a charm. Thinking I may have accidently deleted all my Air's Documents, I looked in the Trash. Nada. I restored a few more files with the old Flash drive and played around with the Air. 

     It blinked—and all my lost files appeared in place! 

     Thank you, Deus ex Machina also known as God of the Machine. 

New book cover - Aarrghh!!

I really love the original yellow and red cover on DARK LADY'S STONE with Loriano playing to the Stone with the image of the Lady. Many people have commented favorably on it, but many others said it wasn't a good cover and would turn readers off.
So I finally got a new one to see what will happen and went to upload it to Create Space. It was endless frustration! I think The Gods are firmly against that new cover! Or maybe it's my resistance to change. First I couldn’t figure out where, on Create Space’s setup/ cover screen to input the new file. So I phoned them, and their representative quickly pointed it out. (Why I hadn’t seen that in the five times I’d looked???) So I hit “Upload cover." “Browse.” And I got a message to update Adobe on my browser. I don’t WANT Adobe on my Safari! Why did I get Firefox & Chrome except to have a browser with Adobe? And why do I need Adobe to upload a .PDF anyway? I kept hitting "Later" and "No." Create Space wouldn’t let me proceed. Update Adobe or else!
Back to Square 0. Open Firefox. Log into CS again. Find Cover Setup. Hit Browse. Choose File. I choose the file. Hit upload. And it starts loading—Ta-Da! Two-thirds of the way through a message flashes: Upgrade Firefox. Screw it! I hit Later. And thank the gods my cover file keeps loading. When it finally finishes it looks just like the old cover. I go back to my folder, double-check my artwork files—and it is the old cover!! And furthermore CS is reviewing my submission and I can’t make further changes until they finish. 
Aarrghh!