Finally, after sending in four iterations of the application, two checks and a credit card payment (one of the checks was returned - twice

), our friends at the FCC gave up and granted me my vanity call sign: KV6WTF.
And now that cruiserlarry clued me in to programming the repeater offset

, I can check into the next net instead of just listening.
If anyone plans to file anything with the FCC, I suggest talking to others first who've attempted to do so already. Myself and others can help you avoid some of the pitfalls so you don't have an experience as bad as mine was.

A few other hams have mentioned they've had frustrations with the agency similar to mine.