::not necessarily... VB .Net does have a special syntax for supporting optional paremeters in methods (that I don't remember now from the top of my head...)

Oops... I reread your message and I see I misunderstood it at first. You're saying "not necessarily" to my musing about whether overloading is the ONLY way.

You may be right -- I just don't know about it yet (would like to, though, if there is).

I also don't pretend to be anything but in my infancy about .NET :)