Yeah, it's no fun You can work around it a bit by putting the iPod to sleep rather than turning it off, only installing software from Cydia when you're near a computer, and managing your battery life carefully, but there's no question that it's more of a hassle than it should be. There are persistent rumors of an impending untethered jailbreak for the 3G Touch and later 3GS models, but nothing has been released yet...
That's the rumor, anyway. Of course, he's also sworn to stop even working on the iPhone OS due to the entitled morons bugging him on Twitter and his website, so it's hard to say what exactly is in the pipeline
greenp0sion has already delevoped a un tether jailbreak but is just waiting for the 4G to come out to jailbreak that too so apple doesnt update their protection and make the 4G tethered too