Nice review, fits with my experience with the lens as well. My only real complaints are the fairly stiff focus and I have a habit of bumping the aperture ring in shooting. Not sure if that's just me but I have accidentally bumped the aperture to f8-f11 more than once when I needed it to be wide open for light gathering.
Jordan, just curious but did you get a chance to try the AF both pre and post firmware upgrade? The July fw update seems to have made an enormous difference for me. It's still not going to set any records as you said in your review, but it's much more usable now and the optics make it worth it.