I love having Google around. A friend of mine works there, and we’ve spoken generally before about setting up FAQ pages for business service sites – and both sort of agreed that plain HTML files with Google search in front of it would really be just fine.

I demonstrated that twice to myself just tonight. One had to do with getting the door back on our electric range (we cleaned it). One google of “maytag range door back on” and two clicks from the second result and I’m here – a note from someone else confirming what a PITA this is going to be. We finally got it, and I believe it to be still a one-in-a-million shot, but I felt good having the confirmation from someone else in the world, that we weren’t completely on the wrong track. We will never take that door off again, BTW.

The other was that I was trying to rip some “old” CD’s of ours to put onto AJ’s new mp3 player. We really enjoy his phonetic pronunciation of some of the classic bands we have – REO Speedwagon, REM, etc… – but that’s another story. I started ripping with iTunes – which is super cinchy – there is an auto-detect when iTunes is running. Pop your CD in and it asks if you want to rip. So, I clicked. After 5 discs worth I finally tried to move them over. Crap. what is a.m4p anyway? Ugh, proprietary iTunes only to iPod formula. Darn it. I have an iPod, so that works for me, but AJ has a Sansa by SanDisk – so that was a massive wasted of time.

So to Google I go. Searched “mp3 rip free” a bit – since I’m in a time crunch and don’t want to buy something on such short notice that I haven’t fully evaluated. Some of what comes up is a bit sketchy. Then it dawns on me – the anti-Apple solution (I have a PC, BTW) – Windows Media Player!

I pop that open – and there a large glorious button right across the top, “Rip”. I try it. Error. Crap. Back to Google and search the error. The Microsoft Support site comes up, but is less than helpful.

Windows Media Player Error Message Help

You've encountered error message C00D10D2 while
using Windows Media Player. Additional information
is not currently available for this error.

Great error message. Anyway, some sub-detail here does indicate that I likely lack of an mp3 encoder available to my Windows Media Player. More quick Googling turns up this gem from Matt Read’s The Weblog. I won’t go into the details, but suffice it to say, a quick grab of this installer, provided by Justin Leoni, and in less than 2 minutes, I am happily ripping away to mp3 format.

What did we do before the Internet? Spend money with the Maytag man and listen to Vinyl, 8-tracks, and cassettes I guess. I’ll take the Internet age, thank you very much. And thank you Google!