Hi @glenbuckarts ,
you are not wasting my time so don't worry about that, everything that has been written thus far may well help someone else with a similar problem!. 
The other alternative is to take your laptop to a qualified PC mechanic or maybe buy a 2nd hand CD/DVD drive from somewhere and that might fix the problem, if it is indeed a mechanical problem in the first place!.
Like I said in my previous post:
Also, some laptops (mine included) won't read the disk drive straight away, when you see the grub menu, press Ctrl + Alt + Del to restart the laptop, you might have to do it 2 or 3 times before the drive kicks in!. Make sure you have the Ubuntu disk in the drive first!.
You can always try a USB install:
And see the following also: