gnome-applet-volume-control is a huge usability regression

[Gene Heskett]

Greetings all;

Ubuntu-10.04.4 LTS

Some so-called update in the last 2 weeks has moved the system volume 
control from my keyboard, to a teeny little icon in the notifier applet.

Generally when I need to get to it because the fscking commercial in front 
of a news story is 40 db louder than the previous watched stories audio 
track was, trying not to wake the missus sleeping 4 rooms away, but because 
the mouse pointer has been blanked, you can't find the SOB without issuing 
a click someplace to unblank it just so you can move the pointer to this 
microscopic icon in the upper right corner of the screen, then roll the 
wheel to adjust the volume.  That works, but the extra click needed to 
unblank the mouse (why does it not unblank just by moving it?) is 
occasionally miss interpreted causing unwanted side effects, and it takes 
several seconds of waving the ^%$ mouse around to find it in the screen 
clutter and do it.

My keyboard has volume up/down/mute functions buttons which DID work very 
well and instantly, and could be used in a second or less for this until 
some "genius" thought it could be better done with an icon.  Quotes 
intended to be satire of course because left to my natural instincts, 
genius isn't the proper descriptive word.

So, how the heck do I restore the keyboards volume/mute controls and get 
rid of or disable this "gnome-applet-volume-control" thing that got itself 
installed as an update or something?

Thank you.

Cheers, Gene
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