First, what's the equivalent of intensity=9 in cgminer, etc? Setting breaktime to 90ms?
I don't think there's a direct equivalent. If I'm not mistaken, the miner programs that use "insensity" put a certain amount of load on the GPU and how laggy things get depend on how fast the GPU is. Intensity 9 could be very choppy on one computer, and smooth on another. I wanted something that works independent of how fast the GPU is. So 90ms work intervals just say "try to create work loads that take 90ms on my hardware."
Second, I see merged mining is coming soon. Just how soon? I'm hoping before the current bonus runs out

I think it will be done before block 60 is completed. But I don't want to give any specific dates, as I just don't know. But here's a quick update on the progress.
This is done:
- Modify database to support merged mining and other cool features that will be revealed at a later date
- Rewrite existing code to work with the new database schema (running on server now)
- Support for pool backend to watch multiple block chains for new blocks, maturity of our created blocks, etc.
- Pay in correct currency when blocks mature
- Create block headers ("work units") for miners built on the necessary merged mining data
This is what remains:
- Create blocks when miners find a good enough proof of work
- Auto cash out for non-BTC currency
- Testing, so I don't deploy something completely broken
Maybe I should get merged mining running before cash out of NMC is working. Better to get some NMC today and get cash out feature tomorrow, than to get nothing today and cash out feature tomorrow.

But after I get block creation working I will need to do at least a little testing. The server is running nicely now creating BTC - I don't want it to stop working because of bugs.
can someone make sense of this:
Not sure what the problem is there? But I have never used cgminer.