title: option strict question
body: <p>Late binding is not allowed and that's how we want it.</p>
  
  <p>Depending on whether our program is running on a LAN or the Internet, we need to dim an object as one of two types.
  We use an if...then statement to ascertain whether or not we are running on a LAN or the Internet.</p>
  
  <p>When we declare our object inside the if...then statement, we have declared in the wrong scope and cannot use the object.
  When we declare it as an 'Object' type and use DirectCast inside an if...then statement, we receive a late binding error.</p>
  
  <p>How can we get around this problem without turning off Option Strict?</p>