Enabling Sound on Ubuntu after Upgrade to ver 9.0.4

After many fits getting my Ubuntu install to play nice by installing wireless/sound drivers, I decided to upgrade from ver 8.x to 9.0.4 (Jaunty Jackalope?). After installing/rebooting the system, I discovered my sound no longer worked. Verifying that the speakers were on & plugged into the sound card (simple crap first), I reported the bug to Ubuntu. After that, I tried reinstalling the drivers by going to "Terminal" (Ubuntu's Command Line), & entered:
sudo su
(password)
cd (directory where sound card lives)
make
make install

I rebooted...

Still no sound, so I hit the internet again & found a troubleshooting guide here: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Bugs/FindRightPackage
which led me here:
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/DebuggingSoundProblems

Being new to Ubuntu, I'm still floundering, so all you seasoned Ubuntu dudes & dudettes are probably laughing your asses off right now. After going through this useful guide, I made my way down to the "Checking permissions and resources" (hello!)

I went to: System>Preferences>Sound, and found that my permissions to use "Audio Devices" was unchecked.



Of course, I didn't have permissions to change my permissions, which led to another discovery. There is, in this same dialog box, an Unlock button. Hmmm...Unlock what, I wondered, so of course I clicked it. It asked me for my Password, I entered it, & voila (or viola as some would say), I now had the ability to change my permissions. In fact, I gave myself permissions to everything (I've been known to be generous).



I rebooted.

I now have sound, AND, the upgrade seemed to fix my browser woes (couldn't get YouTube, Pandora to work before).