Multiple wireless networks

[Duane Morin]

I have wireless setup at home.  I run web and have changed all the 
defaults (channel, SSID, and so on).  My laptop is configured to work with 
that just fine.

My local Panera Bread has started doing wifi.  To use it, they tell me, 
you just bring in the laptop and it just works.  This is going to become
more of a real problem as valid free wifi hotspots become available to
me (I"m travelling next week, perhaps the hotel will have one).  

Since I can't seem to make it work, can somebody shed some light on
the major moving parts that might be causing me trouble? I'm using
a prism2_usb wireless device with the linux-wlan stuff.  I have
/etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-wlan0 to consider, but also
all the stuff in /etc/wlan/* for which I notice there is a wlancfg-XXXX 
(xxxx being the name of my own SSID at home).  If I have all 
the proper 'default' values, is the wlan stuff smart enough to scan
until it finds something it can connect to?  Or is there something
I have to turn on that says "use whatever you can find?"  It's 
quite likely that when I first set this up I put in my SSID and
other info because it seemed logical that would be the only network
I'd ever want to use.  Well, I wanna change that.

Thanks!

Duane