Comment 21 for bug 442748

I have workarounds, but it would be great if they were better, for these two nagging problems:
1.) Every time I reboot the computer and login, the sound volume is turned all the way down. Is there a way to modify this setting?

2.) My sound is very fragile... I can easily break the sound into "static crunchiness" by hitting backspace in the terminal 3 times while any sounds (e.g., music) are playing from another application. As a workaround for this problem, I can reset the sound by turning the hardware off and back on from the gnome-volume-control on the panel. However, this is a very tedious workaround because it takes about 8 clicks to go through the process, sometimes more - if I have to minimize something that's full screen first. Is there a setting somewhere in the system where I could setup a batch script, tied to a launcher or keystroke, that could automate this "power cycling" of the sound hardware into 1 click?

Thanks for making Ubuntu and GNU/Linux awesome!!
Shannon