Thanks for the feedback guys. These are all good thoughts.
I think I'm just going to design my own homebrew which has been suggested otherwise on the WotC forums.
Also, I'm going to disagree entirely about the "encounter" vs. "daily" suggestion two of you made that they are the same resource.
While, encounter powers use a "rest" to recharge, it's an entirely meta-level adjustment. Meaning, encounter powers charge "whenever there is a battle" - i.e. whenever in the game the DM decides there is a battle. It means, it's not tied to any "in-game" timespan. It's simply tied to the meta-level aspect of "ok, this encounter is over - recharge".
However, daily powers aren't tied to any meta-level aspect (but others have suggested doing so, such as "recharge dailies when appropriate to the story" [meta-level] or "recharge dailies every 4 encounters" [meta-level] or "recharge based on milestones" [meta-level]).
Instead, they are tied to in-game time spans. Every 12 hours means _nothing_ as far as story pacing (meta) or player and DM expectations (meta). So, if for the story, I want a "morning" encounter that really tests the PCs, I have to go to extraordinary lengths to do that because the PCs just had a rest (unless I arbitrarily cause them to have no 'sleep' and/or increase the difficulty of the encounter dramatically which often has a side-effect of still not challenging the PCs, but just dragging out the encounter or sometimes maybe the opposite- it becomes too hard and ends in a TPK).
No, I'm looking to play the game to where each battle has a sense of intensity you might find in that "last battle of the day". I want to have battles that coincide with story elements, and not have to feel like I have to get "4 battles" in to challenge the players.
I guess this is a different system altogether, as 4E is about attrition. I'm looking for the players to have X resources at the beginning of each battle, and see how they take it down each battle. So, resources on a battle-by-battle basis.
Anyways, thanks for the feedback and suggestions!