2.0 master pages and codebehind cycle

[Daves]

I am using the codebehind in my masterpage to set some global variables
which all children (content) pages use, for example the DB connection
string.
It seems the master page code is run AFTER the content pages' and so the
content page code never sees these variables. Can I change this? Or should I
pherhaps use some other alternative eg. an user control (with codebehind) or
even global.aspx ??

[Daves]

found this (to be placed in masterpage code behind):

protected override void OnPreInit(EventArgs e)
{
... my code ...
base.OnPreInit(e);
}
well... I get error "no suitable method found to override"

blows my mind