Hey David,
A-propos this thread in the AWS SQS Forum:
http://developer.amazonwebservices.com/connect/thread.jspa?threadID=33151&tstart=0
I have already modified the lifeguard code to allow it to run without
the ingestor & service sending Work Status messages and/or without the
service reporting its busy-ness status. I modified the xsd to allow
these queue names to be missing, and the framework code to act nicely
when those queues are null.
If this is interesting, I'd be happy to wrap it up in a patch and
submit it.
.. Shlomo