Yup, I hate that Microsoft chat programs no longer give you the option of showing available whenever signed in. Has to force it's own system of timeouts and away. So people will start emailing me thinking I'm away when I'm just waiting for a ping. Ended up installing Caffeine and having it press Shift so that the system will recognize that I'm actually alive and available.
I could email it to myself, (Flash Drives are prevented) but it's not worth it. I am extremely fortunate that my company does not give two shits about micromanaging, and so no one really cares about my status. It's just annoying to me that it goes yellow so quickly, but it's not worth the risk.