thanks for the replies. i apologize; perhaps i wasn't clear. i'm making a distinction between "error" and "exception".
i already use job.errormessage within the jobdone sub. no problem as far as that goes. unfortunately, an exception is not captured there, only an "error". exceptions are, apparently, trapped elsewhere by the system.
also, i am not the one calling the toast message; it simply appears when the exception occurs.
i have seen references to the exceptionex library, and i will look into it, but i don't understand why i can't reference lastexception.message at some appropriate moment, eg within a try-catch-end try block? and, in case my use of msgbox is causing the issue, i've also tried to log the lastexception.message within catch. nothing.
if the timeout exception were not an exception i wouldn't be asking about lastexception.message, but the toast message i see says it is an exception (java socket timeout exception). i've looked in the httpjob and http2utils modules, but i don't see anything to indicate they're calling the toast message.
-go