Sweeet
My error is gone.
Originally, I had a problem with USB interaction with VirtualBox. The permissions, of course weren't correct in the sense that they were hindering me. After google-ing around on and off for a couple of days because I had other things to do I found this:
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=676079
Originally, I was gonna edit the /etc/fstab file and so I "sudo cp fstab fstab_copy" just in case I FUBAR'd it and everything crashed. Luckily I didn't go that route, because I didn't clearly read the part of the user manual that said something along the lines of 'the following is for older systems". (hehe yeah horrible, I know) I search around a bit more and then I found that. Alls well that ends well.
as usual, if you read this you get a cookie, regardless of whether or not you read the entire post