Ive created an account at BTC Guild, and have a USB miner on order. While im waiting for that to show up (backordered), I thought I would try to get a micro-BTC or two using the cpuminer (minerd.exe).
However, im getting an error as shown below. Im using my real username and the _1 (worker suffix). BTC Guild said the password was not required, so just used a dummy one "123" per their notes. I already checked that I can ping the host and port, so it's not a network firewall or other issue that im familiar with.
$ ./minerd.exe -o "
http://stratum.btcguild.com:3333" -O "username_1:123"
[2013-12-09 16:23:04] Binding thread 0 to cpu 0
[2013-12-09 16:23:04] Binding thread 2 to cpu 2
[2013-12-09 16:23:04] 8 miner threads started, using 'scrypt' algorithm.
[2013-12-09 16:23:04] Binding thread 6 to cpu 6
[2013-12-09 16:23:04] Binding thread 7 to cpu 7
[2013-12-09 16:23:04] Binding thread 5 to cpu 5
[2013-12-09 16:23:04] Binding thread 1 to cpu 1
[2013-12-09 16:23:04] Binding thread 3 to cpu 3
[2013-12-09 16:23:04] Binding thread 4 to cpu 4
[2013-12-09 16:23:26] HTTP request failed: Failed connect to stratum.btcguild.com:3333; No error
[2013-12-09 16:23:26] json_rpc_call failed, retry after 30 seconds