Cover connection cleanup

Clean up some of the cover connection functions, a few other odds and ends with regard to exception checking and null pointer checking. I have my AS set to automatically optimize imports which leads to a diff which often does more than it says it does. If it gets annoying please let me know and I'll turn it off, though, generally, I think it's a good thing.

Let me know if you see any thing you don't like, no matter how small, let me know.