This command will disable autoplay for audio CDs:

defaults write com.apple.finder AutoplayAudioCD '0'

There’s a fun utility called drutil that is quite useful. It has a poll command which will run and output status/state changes (you could also manually poll with status, both are quite useful for scripting as you can imagine). It also has all kinds of related information dumps and of course, allows controlling of the tray and ejection.

Lastly, all the tools that you’d want for ripping/making CDs are available via Fink, although cdrdao requires compiling, and cd-discid and abcde are only available in the unstable branch.

Now that I have to suffer through frequent Tomcat restarts and other interminable waitstates, I figure I will have lots of time to pop CDs in and out at work. If I do 20 a day, I could be done in less than a month.