how to configure pulseaudio to leave my volume settings alone

Every now and then, and always at night (more like early morning) when
I'm going to bed, pulseaudio will cause VLC's volume to go from 50 to
maxed out the second any music starts playing. I have to hover my mouse
over the volume setting so I can take it back to 50 the instant it goes
full blast. This, btw, is in Slackware 15, but I have the same issues on
an old Linux Mint system, and there I was told it was pulseaudio doing
it.

So here's the question: How do I stop it from doing this? I can't
imagine that people like having it do that,so someone surely knows how to
keep it from jacking around with preset volume levels.

So how do you configure it use the existing volume every time, and never
attempt to change it?

Thanks

--
From my days in 16th Special Operations Wing Intelligence:

AN EXERCISE is a situation in which you stop what you're doing
in order to simulate doing what you were doing so you can show
someone else that you can simulate what you were doing as well
as you were doing it before you were interrupted.