I work with headphones on, listening to music so as to drown out the inane chatter of my officemates. I kid only because I love. But I hate having to always manuever my mouse over and check/uncheck the tiny mute box down in the task bar volume controls when I actually want to interact with them. So I searched for and found Global Audio Contol, a freeware shortcut app for all my system volume controls. The set-up interface is ugly as sin, but now that it's up and running I can hit control+Q without even really stopping my typing and jump right in to the conversation.
UPDATE: Wendy Boswell over at Lifehacker has similarly struggled with volume control. But she went the mouse route. Volumouse lets you customize the scrollwheel to control noise just the way you want to.
