I'm kinda curious why we're tracking the "timeout remaining" when "max time" is easily calculable via now() + seconds(timeout) and asking if now() > max_time?

i think b/c that would require deeper refactoring within _get_messages , which takes a "timeout" parameter and which get_messages may call many times before returning

Ok. We can put that off, but it's drop dead simple and a sure fire way to ensure this kind of bug never slips through again.