(QENG-1086) The master-start-curl-retries is preset to...

...0, which causes default hosts not to retry verifying a bounced master.

- host value being overwritten by default presets
(QENG-1090) beaker: exception when waiting for instance running in ec2

- correctly capture AWS::EC2::Errors::InvalidInstanceID::NotFound when
  checking status of newly created instance, deal with it as another
  case that requires a retry
(QENG-1087) beaker - failure in XML output

- caused by improperly stripping unsupported unicode characters from xml
  output
- add inclusion of 'jcode' for ruby 1.8 (included with Ruby and adds
  lots of useful Unicode-oriented features to String and Regexp)
- tested on 1.9 and 1.8 and correctly replaced invalid unicode with
  escaped hex value
Merge pull request #404 from anodelman/fix-default

(QENG-1086) The master-start-curl-retries is preset to...
Merge pull request #405 from anodelman/utf-8-encoding

(QENG-1087) beaker - failure in XML output
Merge pull request #403 from anodelman/win-fix

(QENG-1081) Beaker Fails During Pre-suite in the "install_pe"...
Merge pull request #406 from anodelman/ec2

(QENG-1090) beaker: exception when waiting for instance running in ec2
(GEM) update version number for 1.17.2
(HISTORY) update history for 1.17.2 gem
Merge pull request #407 from anodelman/make-gem

create beaker 1.17.2 gem
(MAINT) nits in beaker ec2 support

- correctly identify zombies that are over X hours old
- better notification of what instances are being examinged for possible
  termination
- properly notify user of missing aws_access_key_id and
  aws_secret_access_key during initialization
QENG-1080 Fixed issue where we appended the source path to the target path, we now check for absolute path prior
Merge pull request #408 from anodelman/ec2

(MAINT) nits in beaker ec2 support
(GEM) version bump for 1.17.3 gem
(HISTORY) update history for 1.17.3 gem
Merge pull request #410 from anodelman/make-gem

create beaker 1.17.3 gem
(MAINT) kill zombies after provided number of hours

- was always using the default 3 hours
Merge pull request #409 from cyberious/ScpCopyIgnoreFix

QENG-1080 do_scp_to now checks for source path of absolute and prunes accordingly
Merge pull request #411 from anodelman/ec2

(MAINT) kill zombies after provided number of hours
(GEM) version bump for 1.17.4