This is kinda weird, I noticed after deleting /dev/cdrom symbolic link to hdd and creating a new one linking to hdc, that once I restarted it went right back to the old link. Also, after following instructions to correct a problem with permissions on NVIDIA devices the changes only held until the computer was restarted. What is it that keeps overwriting the changes I make to devices? I am logged in as normal user with su to make the changes, and they seem to work fine, even when logging off and logging back in...they just get reset every time I restart the computer...

Are you using udev?
If so, the correct place to add devices is /etc/udev/scripts/make_extra_nodes.sh
and the correct place to edit device perms is /etc/udev/permissions.d/udev.permissions
Also, if you have more than one cdrom device, you need to read up about "persistent" device naming.

Brilliant post, thanks for that, udev was a mystery to me until now.