Ripping and/or converting with VLC - Help me! D:

I'm using VLC on Linux - though, for the record, I have tried the same thing on my windows set up with similar results.

I feel retarded. I just want to do a simple thing that I am having a lot of trouble with, and google searches aren't giving me answers (maybe because it's too stupidly simple.)
I first wanted to rip an audio CD in VLC but I could not get this to work (2 secs, I'll come back to why)
So I wound up getting a stand-alone audio ripped - SoundJuicer - and ripped the CD.....turns out it ripped in Ogg Vorbis because...I don't have MP3 support? Which is weird, because VLC can play all of my MP3's just fine (side note: gmusicbrowser tells me I don't have the mp3 plugin package either)
So, I figured I could just take the ogg files and convert them in VLC, I know how to do that!

Well, i ran into the EXACT same problem I had with ripping the CD: first, it always wants to output the files with the same name. so...say, I tell it to save the files to a folder as "track_1.mp3" - instead of it going, "track_2.mp3" or, god forbid, "track_1(1).mp3", it keeps trying to write each file as "track_1.mp3", meaning I have the option to skip the track or overwrite it. That is pretty annoying in it of itself, however, it seems to get stuck in an infinite loop.
"overwrite track?" -> no -> "okay, overwrite track?" -> no. en infinitum.
So it's not like I can even convert the files or rip the files 1 at a time, because if I force close the box, it assumes "yes, overwrite" which then eliminates the file's data, then VLC closes, and now I am left with a file with no data.

A quick answer would be appreciated (though I'm not hopeful) - I bought a couple CDs today that I would like to be able to listen to on the plane ride tomorrow.

EDIT:
unrelated note: I fixed the music gstreamer plugin problem I was having with gmusicplayer and SoundJuicer. Apparently downloading the packages directly wasn't good enough for the softwares...instead, downloading Rhythmbox and it's additional gstreamer plugins is what those softwares wanted.

Use handbrake. It more than likely better suited.

I dont do this stuff myself.

You know, in my google searching, handbrake came up, but I thought it was just for video.