Richard Bennett

I'm not a professional standards guy, however. I make contributions to these committees (and sometimes lead them) and then implement products to the standards that my colleagues and I invent. Hence I worked for 3Com for ten years producing Ethernet products, for Airgo, Trapeze, and Sharp Labs doing WiFi products, and probably will work for a UWB company as that technology reaches maturity.

I've had the good fortune of working for some of the best-managed companies in the computer industry, such as the part of Texas Instruments run by Compaq founder Rod Canion and for Tandem Computers during the Jimmy Treybig era. I've also worked for some of the worst-managed companies, but that list is too long for this web site.

This web site houses some non-real-time curry recipes, holdovers from my first efforts with HTML that refuse to die. These are now assembled in  World-Wide Curries and are apparently among the most definitive to be found, since they're linked by sites serving the South Asian community in India and the United States. I haven't tried them all, but the ones I have were pretty good.

The Chili of Excellence Page is much less authoritative, but it's not a bad starter for those on the road to perfecting their "bowl of red." Recent chili experiments confirm that Texas Longhorn beef produces a superior flavor lower in fat than chicken or fish, and that kidney suet in moderation sweetens the mix. Curry meets chili in the beef curries of Malaysia and Singapore, the most satisfying cuisine in the world and probably the Next Big Food now that Thai is so 20th Century. 

I've also done a fair bit of political activism, working with California Senator Chuck Calderon (chair of the Judiciary Committee), Assemblyman Rod Wright (Utilities and Commerce committee chair), and Senate president pro-tem John Burton to pass and/or amend a number of measures improving the state of family law.  The most notable of these bills are SB 509 on Spousal Support, and SB 542, creating the statewide Department of Child Support Services to improve the process for both payers and recipients of child support. I've served on a number of oversight boards and commisssions related to the court system, given numerous interviews to the press, and appeared on television and radio programs such as California Capitol Review with Jack Kavanaugh. Although I've retired from lobbying, I still get the odd call from the Wall Street Journal or the L. A. Times, I stay in touch with my favorite columnists and elected officials. 

I'm a big fan of the Oakland A's baseball team, jumping on the bandwagon after reading Moneyball. I can recommend the Catfish Stew web site for A's fans, home to funny and well-thought-out analysis. Everbody's jumping on the sports blog bandwagon these days (even political blog entrepreneur Markos Moulitsas) but I prefer by baseball free of politics, and my politics free of baseball. It all works better that way.

Enjoy your visit, and drop a note to me if anything you see here intrigues or enrages you. And yes, I know that nothing on this site sets new standards for animation, multimedia, or Java; that's just my cross to bear.