Thanks for the visits — the visits to my Web site, that is. Traffic to the site seems to be on the increase. Now that I’ve installed a site-based search engine, I can track what kind of things my readers are interested in — and then write about those subjects. Speaking of the trackertom.com Web site, I mentioned recently that I had established a “Blog” that was accessible from the site. The blog does indeed still exist and is growing every week — but it’s a different blog altogether from the one I initiated. The original blog was hosted by: www.blogeasy.com but I eventually found quite a few flaws in their service. I’ve now switched over to Blogger, which can be found at: www.blogger.com This blogging service is also free, as is the hosting. It works much more smoothly and is easier to add and edit entries. If you don’t know what a blog is by now, just jump over to my Web site and click on the link. You’ll be glad you did. n I’ve had two people ask me this week if I was really going to finish my story from the last column — the story of my search for a childhood friend. One woman even told me that I was being mean by keeping everyone in suspense — but she forgave me. The gist of my telling you about this event is that with Internet access becoming more and more commonplace, and actually becoming an integral part of our lives, we sometimes forget there are those who haven’t even used a computer yet. I spent over a year searching e-mail directories, Usenet newsgroups, Internet service providers, and online telephone directories for my childhood best friend Bobby Deleon. He and his family had moved away from the small town in which we met — shortly after my father was transferred to another military base and took us with him. I had even taken the time to call by telephone some of the other “kids” that I had gone to school with (back in the early 1970s, mind you) and still had no luck. No one knew where Bobby was now. It just so happens that my younger brother Tony now lives in Big Spring, Texas — which is about 25 miles from Colorado City (where Bobby and I met). A few weekends ago, I went to visit my brother, and then, on the way back to Clovis, I drove through Colorado City. Never intending to stop, I ended up doing so anyway. The call of a flea market-type setup got the best of me, I confess. Anyway, while looking through the “stuff,” I struck up a conversation with another fellow shopper. After telling him that I had lived in his town when I was 13, his eyes got real big, and he told me that he remembered me. He also remembered Bobby and even described him. I was speechless (yes, that does happen occasionally). Furthermore, he was still good friends with Bobby’s older brother, who just happened to live about 30 miles north (in Snyder). For brevity’s sake, I caught up with Bobby’s brother. He gave me my childhood friend’s unlisted telephone number in Houston, and within a day, Bobby and I were catching up on 30 years of missing history. He’s a truck driver, has never used a computer nor been on the Internet — but that’s all about to change. Tom DiFrancesca III is a freelance columnist and a resident of Clovis. He can be reached at tomdifran@ureach.com or www.trackertom.com