Preservation of AIM status across disconnect, login/logout, etc.

[mdavis at columbus.rr.com]

I'm running Pidgin 2.12.0 under Windows 7 with the AIM protocol.  I have 
several away status messages saved, that I rotate.  Let's say I have one set as 
"Relaxing."  I logout and login (or just quit Pidgin and restart it), and 
Pidgin says that's what my message is at the bottom of the buddy list, but my 
actual status is just "Away."  (I have myself included in my buddy list.) 
Actually, my text status in my buddy list starts as Relaxing for a split 
second, but changes to Away.  I select Relaxing to "force the issue," but it 
has no effect.  I try setting it to the (built-in) Away, and now the text 
status is consistent, but the icon indicating my status next to my name in the 
buddy list is green, indicating I'm online. Now I can set it to Relaxing, and 
everything is consistent.

I saw similar behavior with AOL's "legacy" AIM client for a few months before 
they discontinued it.  (This is what led to my switch to Pidgin, since the 
"modern" AIM client doesn't support multiple saved away messages.)  So perhaps 
this is a deficiency in the AIM protocol and/or AOL's servers.  But even if 
that's the case, perhaps there's a way for Pidgin to work around it, and 
preserve the user's selected away message and status across restarts, and such.

Cheers