SETI at snailspace

So I watched the movie "Contact" and a couple of years later heard a talk on what SETI is doing and their ideas or approach to one day discover or make contact with alien lifeforms.
My only thought was that it was completely wrong. Yes, I do have my own idea of the right approach or direction. Skip the rant and read the end if you want to know.

Its like rolling a 100-billion-sided dice. And in the whole existance of the human race, we only get to roll it once.
Its like deciding to take a 100-light-year-stroll and really believing we just need to be patient.
And these are the kind of people who are supposed to understand the scale of the distances and the probabilities we are facing. Yes, the calculations should that the probability for other civilisations are in the millions or billions - big deal, it that is still a drop in the ocean of possible places to look. And worse still when reaching/detecting/contacting most of the possible places are so remote that it doesn't matter anymore.

The point? The point is, why are the people of SETI wasting their time combing the sands of the universe when clearly that whole approach and idea is flawed. Sure, we are finding ways to look at a little bit larger cross-sections of sky, only to see 1000+ years into the past. The time-lines don't add up. If a civilisation found us, through tedious observation, it is very likely that they only saw ancient life and moved on, or nothing at all. Even finding a planet suitable to have life, and then waiting for their modern light to reach us, will leave us in extinction before we find it. Besides, would we be able to find or even detect earth as a place of interest from 1000 light years away? Considering we are searching the whole sky, and we only get to see earth 1000 years back. Or do we have a massively powerful beacon, that we are sending a wide-spanding, incredibly strong beacon into space?

The solution. Well, at least the correct approach for the serious section in SETI is to exert ALL efforts to advance our technology in only 2 areas.
1. We will get nowhere (and that applies to aliens also) if we do not gain the ability to manipulate space-time in a stable way. SETI should be working on that, or supporting that in a BIG way.
2. If we really see option 1 as almost impossible and just as unlikely to reach aliens just by looking, then we should SERIOUSLY be looking at self-sustained life on a ship, to send off, for billions of years (yes, I know, evolution would love that little popsicle).

Those seem like the only 2 ways SETI is going to answer the question they are looking for.
There is obviously also the possibility that we ARE completely unique, dispite the math.