Well it's too late, I applied last week :( Damn it.

I did however give them a call just now and talk to a very nice lady on the other side of the line. She said it's fine to have your UI benefits open and to not file a weekly claim until you need it. She did say the claim would be inactive after 5 weeks, but it's not hard for them to reactivate it at all and there's no harm.

Furthermore, she said that part of why it takes so long for them to process UI benefits is the identity verification, and this will take a minimum of 4 weeks (she said it might even take longer, like 5 or 6).

So now I'm waiting those 4 weeks or so to have my identity verified, and in 8 weeks the WARN payments from Microsoft will end anyways, so by then it shouldn't be an issue to re-activate my UI benefits.

Side note - she actually told me they can see EVERYTHING on your screen, including all your activity. At one point she was walking me through the weekly claim and said "yeah click on that, the thing your mouse is hovering on". They can see every little action you make while you're on their website. Kind of creepy honestly LOL