I don't think your questions are focused enough to give you a good answer. You pretty much wrote "Need help, what should I do?!"

However, seeing that you live in SFO, UA is probably the natural airline for you. They pretty much go everywhere from SFO and you'll be able to earn miles on all *A carriers including AC (Air Canada), US, LH (Lufthansa) and SQ (Singapore Airlines). If you go to the NYC area often, UA flies their p.s. service between SFO and JFK which is arguably the best US domestic airline experience and has E+ throughout the entire Y cabin. Having a quick glance at your future travel, you could easily make 2P (Premier) if you indeed flew that much this year and probably 1P (Premier Executive) if you added in a holiday to Oz/Asia. 2P is pretty good as far as low-level elite status goes, but don't count on many upgrades out of a UA stronghold like SFO.

I think you should go take the time to research the FFP and network of all of the US carriers, especially UA, CO (soon to be UA) and AA. Look up the 3 airline alliances and determine what you want from your FFP. If you know what your priorities are, chances are there's a program and airline out there which will make you happy. There's ridiculous amounts of info on this board, you'll learn a lot even by just reading the "readme" threads.