>I was recently helping someone else figuer out
>how to do this and we couldn't figure out why we were getting the "parameter
>not optional" error. On a whim, I stored the result to the variable (which I
>whimsically named 'oCrap') and it automagically started to work.

I think you can do it without the variable, too -- just precede it with the equals sign. I'm on a public terminal at the moment, so I can't easily check it out.