# File lib/ole/types/base.rb, line 61
        def self.dump str
          # need to append nulls?
          data = str.encode(Encoding::UTF_16LE)
          # not sure if this is the recommended way to do it, but I want to treat
          # the resulting utf16 data as regular bytes, not characters.
          data.force_encoding Encoding::ASCII_8BIT
          data
        end