If you're buying deep-discount economy tickets, you can't get 24 upgrades for 110k miles - within the continental US they're 15,000 miles plus a $75 co-pay each way.

My strategy was to use my earned upgrades only on long (transcontinental) flights -- especially on the 777 from LAX-MIA (which I fly rather frequently), since 777 J is far nicer than typical narrowbody F. On the other hand, sitting in F vs. Y doesn't especially matter to me if a flight is only 1-3 hours long. It depends on your priorities, but I personally found that this strategy maximized the value of my sticker upgrades.

You do realize that only base miles (actual flown mileage, more or less) count for earning 500-mile upgrades, right? It wasn't clear from your post whether the 30k you'll have by Feb '11 are butt-in-seat or total miles.