Usage settings would definitely be nice, similar to GUIminer's -s tag. That way you can still use the card while mining at a lower rate.
Ah, thanks, I couldn't quite find the words to put it as eloquently as you did. All I could think of was "scheduling."
Something else that came up in another thread - on exit (signal, ctrl-C, etc) could you implement a "soft shutdown" that guarantees any pending blocks are reported ASAP? I'm not sure how feasible that is for portability or if it would even be helpful, but.... it's worth a mention.