Is there a way to know the node being viewed?
Wow - I just got a reply back from Acquia support that answers the issue. menu_get_object() seems to be one of those magically functions I never knew about. Neat.

global $user;
$node = menu_get_object();

if ($node &amp;&amp; $user) {

  print '&lt;br/&gt;node uid = ' . $node-&gt;uid;
  print '&lt;br/&gt;user uid = ' . $user-&gt;uid;

  if ($node-&gt;uid == $user-&gt;uid) {      
    print t('&lt;br/&gt;You are the author of the current node.');
  }

}