Without having really looked at your code I want to ask you if you've looked at: 1) Alex Martelli's Borg (http://aspn.activestate.com/ASPN/Cookbook/Python/Recipe/66531) 2) Bruce Eckel's discussion of singeltons in "Thinking in Python" (http://64.78.49.204/TIPython.zip) -- o polite http://plusseven.com/gpg/