Most of my flat land riding uses the 3-4 low-middle gears on my cassette. For flat land, I'm quite happy with my cassette and the 50T large chainring on my triple. When I hit the hills and need to bail to a smaller chainring, I've never really been happy with the ratios and most of the time I cant stay in my middle ring. This leads to either being in a granny gear when I have no need or being in slightly too tall of a gear. My current setup is a 50/39/30. Being that the middle is often a little tall and the small is way too small, I was thinking a 50/36 compact would be right up my alley.

For flat land, depending on the road/wind/how flat/my pace/etc, I'd say I like to be between 70ish and 90ish gear inches. I played around with ratios a bit on Sheldon Brown's gear calc, it seems like I'd be happy with a 50/36 compact setup which is why I decided to investigate this further.

And for the record, I'm no longer living near the shop I bought the bike from, however, I highly doubt the problem stems from malfunction or misadjustment. I think one of the teeth on the chainring is bent slightly but I really have no way to check it out. Its not obvious just by looking at it. Its intermittent and seems to be related to how much force I'm using on the pedals and what cadence I'm keeping. Even when it is functioning correctly, I'm not particularly happy with the gearing anyway and think I'd be happier with a compact setup. I rode a friend of mine's Ritchey Road Classic with a SRAM Rival compact setup for a few miles. From the short ride, I did seem to like the gearing more than mine.

My main concern is whether or not my FD is compatible with a compact setup. If it is, I'll wait to score a good deal on a compact crank, throw it on and see if I like the gearing. If not, Its back to chasing the gremlins out of my triple setup.