got things compiling, with much help from chipx86. faceprint figured out where the corruption was happening, I got that fixed. having a TON of problems with set_buddy(), and since that's called whenever someone comes online, goes away, or idle, or in any other way changes status, getting that working is a big deal. it would help if i understood gtk a little bit better. it would also help if the gtk critical warnings gave me a little more information...