[PLUG] Transfer from thumb drive to Windows computer

[John Jason Jordan]

So today I was at PSU and needed to print out a document that I had
created in OO.o Writer. I had my 512 MB thumb drive with me. So first I
exported from Writer as PDF, then used Konqueror to copy the PDF file
to the thumb drive. To do so all I needed to do was stick the thumb
drive in a USB port -- it's blue light came on and Konqueror saw it
immediately. Evidently it just auto-mounts. Before copying the PDF file
to the thumb drive I decided I no longer needed any of the files that
were on it, so I deleted them all. The drive was empty when I copied
the PDF file to it.

Having done that I schlepped to the computer lab at the library. I
logged into one of the university's Windows computers, stuck the thumb
drive in one of its USB ports, and tried to print the PDF file. Big
problem -- no PDF file. The Windows computer saw the thumb drive, but
instead of a PDF file it saw a file called reglog.txt. I opened the
reglog.txt file in Notepad and it appeared to be tags, like field names
for a database. Except mostly the tags were empty, although a few had
data in them. And the data was definitely from my computer -- one
"field" had my first name, another had my hotpop e-mail address.
Definitely the file came from my Ubuntu-64 Breezy computer.

Note: The thumb drive is relatively new. It has never been mounted on
my Windows desktop. It has only been used on the Linux laptop, and then
only once before today.

At that point I took my laptop out, booted it up, put the thumb drive
back in a USB port, and all that appears to be on it is the PDF file.
No file named reglog.txt. The PDF file opens for viewing in Konqueror
and is exactly the document that I created.

I finally got past the problem by using my Linux laptop (sitting on a
chair next to me at the lab) to e-mail the file to my pdx.edu e-mail
account, then logging into the account on the university's computer to
retrieve the file. 

Before this happens to me again, I need to figure out what is going on.
I hope someone here can uninscrute the inscrutable madness that caused
this bizarro situation. Any ideas?