Lost Sound when Plugging in USB flash

I was playing an .avi in kaffeine, and at the same time I plugged in a 512MB USB flash drive. Immediately I lost sound in Kaffeine, though video was still playing. I check Youtube via Firefox, same thing.

I used to have a problem in Amarok where if Amarok crashed, it would mute the sound without my noticing. Thankfully I remembered to check this in Kaffeine, but that was not the problem.

I don't mess with the sound settings often, so I had a fun time trying to find them (turns out they're not in your system or settings menu... try looking for KMix in the Multimedia menu instead.)

I log on to the freenode IRC channel #kubuntu, and a couple nice folks there had some suggestions for me.

I was told to pay special attention to KMix lines: master, master mono, PCM. These were all fine (at or near the top).

(You can also open alsamixer via the command line)

alsamixer

I was then advised to restart ALSA.

sudo /etc/init.d/alsa-utils restart

This did not work. I tried closing all my programs which might be using sound, and running the command again. This did not work either.

I ran the command, and then rebooted. This works! Now I have my sound back.

Lost Sidebar in Thunderbird (folders & calendar)

While using Thunderbird, I clicked on the left somewhere, and all of a sudden my folders and my mini-calendar were gone. What happened? I attempted to click and drag on the very left edge where the edge of the window was, but that didn't work.

Tried all the options in the view menu, looked for other menus. Nothing.

Googled it, and came up with nothing.

Went back into Thunderbird, tried again. This time, it worked. My folder list and calendar re-appeared.

BFI sometimes works. You just have to try harder.

The reason this happened is that the resize is "sticky". You can make the width of the folders panel smaller to a certain point, then BANG, it's gone. The same goes for resizing it from nothing to something. If you only drag the mouse a small distance, the folder frame will not resize. If you drag it to a certain width, then the folder pane will pop back up.