Joe and GRGT1994 - I realized that mine wasn't the easy way out, but I believe that it was your best way to go. Yeah, iTunes can encode it, yeah Windows Media Player will encode it, but because they don't rip to an intermediate file I have had some serious problems with this method causing loud blips and skips in the music that hurt like hell when you're wearing headphones and rocking out to In Flames. Plus I'm a very musical person so the quality is important to me.
iTunes may be fine for some (even most), but I'm very particular and I don't like to half-ass things. So again, I offered the best method that I knew of.