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One of the things I love most about the net, is the way that I can unintentionally stumble upon something which was not that for which I was searching, but nonetheless something to be treasured; like finding a box of old pictures in the attic when you're looking for a bag of old clothes.

Our local cable-TV supplier is finally doing some upgrading of their equipment and is now offering more channels. Unfortunately, I will need to get a converter-box to take full advantage of their new offerings.

One newly added channel that I have been for years waiting patiently -- and I don't need the box for this one -- is the Sci-Fi channel.

At 8:00 every weekday morning, I get to watch " Lost In Space!" This was one of my favorite shows as I was growing up. And if I'm having trouble sleeping, I can watch " Voyage To The Bottom Of The Sea" at 9:00. I remember entering a contest sponsored by the local television station in Milwaukee where it aired. To win, you had to draw, paint, or otherwise create a picture of the Seaview (the submarine on which the show took place). I didn't win though.

And if I wake-up early, I can watch another old favorite, " Land Of The Giants!" Strange though, after watching a couple of episodes I am amazed that I don't remember the characters very well at all. For as much as I loved this show as a child, I remember the concept more so than the substance.

But here's where that old box of photos come in.

At this point in the column I was going to go on to other television shows I watched as a kid. In an effort to both find the link in order to reference it from this column, and, get a list of channels and hopefully links to their websites, I was searching for my cable provider, "Marcus Cable."

While I was wholly unsuccessful in finding the company I was looking for, I found the first chapter of a book. There was something in the one or two sentences displayed by the search engine that gave me a feeling of d‚j… vu so I " clicked on it."

Wow! " Mcteague," the 1899 novel by Frank Norris. This was a book that an eleventh-grade teacher at Cudahy Senior High School had the entire class read over the coarse of a semester. We discussed it as a class at regular intervals and I remember it well. It came up in the search because Marcus is the name of one of the lead characters in this somewhat lengthy tale of greed.

That instructor, Mr. Wenzel (I hope I spelled that right), was one of the few who could capture and hold my full attention. Mixing old army stories with baseball and little lessons he'd learned along the way, he made learning fun. I don't think that I've thought of him since though, until now.

In tracing back the page's address, I found the top-level page of a class project for a University of Texas American Literature coarse. Not only did I find the book, but the analyses of several classes as well. Though very interesting reading, it wasn't quite the same as Mr. Wenzel's class.

This was actually supposed to be last week's story but just as I was finishing a most enjoyable second reading of this excellent book, my thoughts were diverted by the email from Guy. A perfect example of the unpredictable nature of the information super-highway. Not to mention it's magnitude.

The internet is still exploding. I don't know the percentages, but I know far more people who are not wired than that even know what a Netscape is -- aren't there enough links to their site? As a steadily increasing number of people, companies, schools, libraries, and other groups publish anything and everything they can scan into the computer, there is no telling what may come up in a search.

So when searching for cable keep an eye peeled for gold.