[NeoDuck]

 great, were you able to change the firmware boot order and get it booted from internal SSD by default? 

 I was able to update the firmware to 2018, mine was on 2016 firmware. 

It was quite a few settings, less than 10 though.

Here's what I remember:

I set the "mode" to Legacy.

I set it to boot to the internal SSD.

It works as I need it to now, though.  When it detects bootable devices in the USB, it waits about 3 seconds for me to press [ESC] then, it boots to the internal SSD.  Previously, it would hang if the user didn't press [ESC] and reboot after 60 seconds to try again, just to repeat the loop.  This way is much better because it doesn't need user input to boot to the internal SSD.

For anyone coming to this thread by Google, TRY DIFFERENT USB FLASH DRIVES!!!

I thought mine were just fine, they were literally brand new and Sandisk brand, not generic but they didn't work.  I even tested with USB HDD portable and desktop drives.  The problem with all of these devices was that the Chromebox would detect them IF THEY WERE NOT formatted as boot drives.  But, if they were formatted as boot drives, the Chromebox no longer saw them.  The devices that failed to boot in the Chromebox booted just fine in other machines.

None of the drives I originally tested were smaller than 32GB.  Some were USB 2.0, some were USB 3.0.

As a last ditch effort, I went out and bought a variety of USB Flash drives.  The one that worked was a 16GB USB 2.0 (specs posted above).  I don't think the size actually matters, it was just luck of the draw.  But, having the smaller ones (8GB, 16GB) won't hurt and probably help.

I wasted 1.5 days on this.  Do yourselves a favor, just have a bunch of USB Flash drives on the ready.

THANKS AGAIN FOR ALL YOUR HELP, MATT!