If you're going to try option 1, I think there is a good case for making sure that you are in adjacent seats prior to OLCI. Sometimes OLCI is broken and you won't be able to change your seats until you get to the airport, by which time it may be too late to get two seats together at all. I find this failure of their systems - or more to the point, their apparent inability to do anything about it when it happens - far more annoying than their seat-selection rules.