Encoding::InvalidByteSequenceError when handling exception in safe_perform

[koenigma1]

Summary: safe_perform! catches exceptions, and then records the exception through the failed method:
failed("The task failed because of an error: #{e}")
Eventually we attempt to dump the exception string to JSON and get this error:
Encoding::InvalidByteSequenceError: "\xC7" on US-ASCII
activesupport-3.2.19/lib/active_support/json/encoding.rb" line 123 in encode
activesupport-3.2.19/lib/active_support/json/encoding.rb" line 123 in escape
activesupport-3.2.19/lib/active_support/json/encoding.rb" line 69 in escape
activesupport-3.2.19/lib/active_support/json/encoding.rb" line 177 in encode_json
activesupport-3.2.19/lib/active_support/json/encoding.rb" line 48 in block in encode
activesupport-3.2.19/lib/active_support/json/encoding.rb" line 77 in check_for_circular_references
activesupport-3.2.19/lib/active_support/json/encoding.rb" line 46 in encode
activesupport-3.2.19/lib/active_support/json/encoding.rb" line 252 in block in encode_json
activesupport-3.2.19/lib/active_support/json/encoding.rb" line 252 in each
activesupport-3.2.19/lib/active_support/json/encoding.rb" line 252 in map
activesupport-3.2.19/lib/active_support/json/encoding.rb" line 252 in encode_json
activesupport-3.2.19/lib/active_support/json/encoding.rb" line 48 in block in encode
activesupport-3.2.19/lib/active_support/json/encoding.rb" line 77 in check_for_circular_references
activesupport-3.2.19/lib/active_support/json/encoding.rb" line 46 in encode
activesupport-3.2.19/lib/active_support/json/encoding.rb" line 31 in encode
activesupport-3.2.19/lib/active_support/core_ext/object/to_json.rb" line 16 in to_json
multi_json-1.3.7/lib/multi_json/adapters/json_common.rb" line 11 in dump
multi_json-1.3.7/lib/multi_json.rb" line 115 in dump
resque-1.25.2/lib/resque.rb" line 31 in encode
resque-status-d8b2bbba92ed/lib/resque/plugins/status/hash.rb" line 193 in block (2 levels) in singletonclass
resque-status-d8b2bbba92ed/lib/resque/plugins/status/hash.rb" line 41 in set
resque-status-d8b2bbba92ed/lib/resque/plugins/status.rb" line 184 in status=
resque-status-d8b2bbba92ed/lib/resque/plugins/status.rb" line 249 in set_status
resque-status-d8b2bbba92ed/lib/resque/plugins/status.rb" line 227 in failed
resque-status-d8b2bbba92ed/lib/resque/plugins/status.rb" line 173 in rescue in safe_perform!
resque-status-d8b2bbba92ed/lib/resque/plugins/status.rb" line 160 in safe_perform!

I monkey-patched a workaround for this issue, but I don't think this is good solution. Looking for a suggestion of a good way to fix this so I can create a PR.
https://github.com/quirkey/resque-status/blob/master/lib/resque/plugins/status.rb#L173
# start monkey patch
msg = "The task failed because of an error: #{e}"
encoding_options = {
:invalid => :replace, # Replace invalid byte sequences
:undef => :replace, # Replace anything not defined in ASCII
:replace => '?', # Use a ? for those replacements
:universal_newline => true # Always break lines with \n
}
msg.encode!(Encoding.find('ASCII'), encoding_options)
failed(msg)
# end monkey patch
Thanks.