SATA card-reader unusable after eject? (was: Nashua LUG and linux question)

[David Rysdam]

"Marc Nozell (marc at nozell.com)" <nozell at gmail.com> writes:
> Why not just use the 'unmount' button from nautilus rather than 'safely
> remove'?  That is really want you want.

So this brings up a related question for me: I stick my backup USB drive
into the slot. Nothing is mounted, but I see the device listed in
Thunar. I click that and it is mounted.

But I don't want to have to click the GUI so I can go back to the
command line and do my thing. Why doesn't it (where "it" is probably
"XFCE" in this case) just mount it, if it already knows everything it
needs to know and only lacks a click?

Oh and speaking of terrible default behavior, I'm once again bitten by
the bug (yes, I consider it a bug) that local users without root access
can't shut down Debian. And this time, there are hundreds of solutions,
none of which apply. Grrrr.