Yeah, I can`t get into my site either right now. It`s not really a site anyway, just a storage drive on a server on the net. The people at fault are Driveway.com, and they said they are experiencing some problems at the moment. I hope they`ll have it back on line soon.
About your 1st question, I use Audio Catalyst`s Audio Grabber. There you have the option to choose between fixed bit-rate, and variable bit-rate. It`s a very good program, but it isn`t free.