Okay, there's fun, and then there's fun.  I think I've passed the point of diminishing entertainment playing with the little tool/site for my PyCon talk... somewhere in there I implemented a publish-subscribe system that looks a lot like a simpler version of Bayeux (with fewer transports, mind you, just poll and long-poll).  While learning Tornado and CouchDB was fun, I really need to just get the actual UI written (instead of the plumbing) and then get some paying work in the door.

I don't know that I'd use this technology stack in a real-world application; it's fine, but pulling an off-the-shelf comet server and client would likely be more practical for the comet stuff... even if the implementation isn't particularly accessible having someone professionally maintaining it is way more important.  That said, the implementation is bloody simple, so maybe for some simple task some day...

As for CouchDB... I'm not really in love.  Maybe it's just the years of PostgreSQL experience and the familiarity of SQLAlchemy's ORM but I find myself seeing Couch as more of a low-level data-store than a database... joins are just *so* convenient.  I'm afraid I'm relegating it to the same position as ZODB in my toolbox, that is, something that might show up some day as being useful for a particular project, but not something I intend to work with enough to mold it to my hands.  Maybe as I finish the project I'll find the zen there, but not yet.

Maybe just take a few days off of the project to get my joy on again.