Hi Brian,
"Must not assign to a direct string param"
This means you must not alter a direct string param, as it would destroy the caller's string. You can either pass the string byref, or assign to another string, which you can alter without affecting the caller's string.
In the second error, you have an unidentified symbol: sss_buffer which has fallen through to the assembler. This suggests, to me, that you are trying to redim an array/variable which has already been defined statically. Dynamic arrays have an associated _buffer.