knowing when the computer is booted

[wearable@xxxxxxxxx (Doug Sutherland)]

Roy,

With the sound working, do an lsmod and find the sound module names.
You can add some modprobe commands to load those modules on boot.
Or, depending on the system, adding entries to /etc/modules.conf
for sound can make the modules load automatically. Are you using
ALSA sound drivers?

   -- Doug