altivo

Answers to five questions posed by

doc_moreau, original meme can be found here.

1. If I remember correctly, your home is equipped with a geothermal power source. What are some of the details of it? (I've almost never heard of residential applications for this, due to its expensive nature, so I am curious.)

You do remember correctly. These systems are not common this far north, I guess, but there are a fair number of them installed in the southern US where heat pumps are more commonly used. What we have is a heat pump system, and the main difference between it and the common heat pump (reversible air conditioner, essentially) is that instead of exchanging heat with the outside air, it exchanges through three wells that are drilled 100 feet down adjacent to the house. A coolant is pumped through tubes that loop down into those wells. So in summer the heat pump runs as an air conditioner, dissipating heat removed from the house into the ground, while in winter it runs in the other direction, bringing warmth from underground and circulating it in the house. The ground temperature at that level is 55 or 60 degrees F. year round, so it is definitely cooler than our target summer temperature, and warmer than the ambient winter temperatures.

Our summer air conditioning is so inexpensive that we hardly notice it on the electric bill. Obviously, in winter, you don't achieve "toasty" warmth, but you do keep the pipes from freezing. We have a woodstove that provides auxiliary heat when necessary, and the electric system is equipped with an electric furnace that can come on automatically if the heat pump isn't keeping up with the thermostat setting. This tends to happen in the early morning when outside temperatures fall below 10 F. or so.

The system also has a link to the water heater, and can dump excess heat there where it can be taken advantage of, rather than just throwing it into the ground.

It wasn't horribly expensive. The hard part was finding someone who would sell and install it. When we bought the place, the house had an air to air heat pump system that was aging badly (20 years old) and needed replacement. We found that an equivalent air to air system was going to cost about $5,000 and I think the final cost of the geothermal, once we found a supplier and competent installers, was about $10,000. I haven't calculated the savings in electric bills, but I suspect most of the difference has been recovered in the last five years. Certainly we've had the electric utility out here a couple of times because they don't believe we are using electric heat and yet keep our bills so low. They insist on inspecting the meter and the system to make sure we aren't "cheating" them.

2. From where did your name originate? (Altivo) Also, the variations? (Tivo Overo, Fuffle) (I believe I've seen those elsewhere)

The simple answer is that I stole it from the horse character in the animated film The Road to El Dorado. The more correct answer is that in Spanish, Altivo is a fairly well-known and logical name for a stallion, just as we use Fido, Rover, or Spot for dogs in English. The word is used to describe any horse with elegant and elevated movement. Logically, the feminine Altiva could be used for a mare, though I've never seen it. I adopted the name when I created a horse character for WildSpirits MUSH back in 2002. Constrained by the theme of that (now defunct) environment, I chose to be an escaped stud from a Spanish colonial ranch in the deep southwest. The full name of the character was Altivo Rey de los Llanos Altos and can be literally translated as "arrogant king of the high plains". That particular Altivo could not be a Clydesdale, due to thematic constraints, so he was a black and white overo, hence the surname Overo that I sometimes use. The shortening to 'Tivo came about when one or two other characters adopted that form and I went with it. (And have since regretted it sometimes because it has nothing to do with digital television recorders, but many assume that it does.)

The nick Fuffle goes back much farther, to at least 1978, when I used it in a sort of paper RP that was conducted through newspaper personal columns (described in this posting from April 6, 2004.) Needing a nom de plume as it were, I created Fuffle from kerfuffle, and also as a compounding of "fluffy", "furry", and "cuddle". So far as I know, that name is unique to me.

3. How long have you been active on the net? And for what portion of this time have you been active in the 'furry' community?

Before there was public access to the internet, we had dialup computer bulletin boards (similar to today's web forums and blogs) and then interactive chat systems provided by large private networks who charged by the hour or minute for connect time (similar to IRC). I acquired my own first personal computer in 1981 (a TRS-80 model III) and got a modem for it not long after that. In a very real sense, I date my involvement with networked communications to about that time. At the same time, I acquired my amateur radio license and became involved with radio networks.

When I went to work for a library software house in 1989 as a technical writer, it wasn't long before I was exposed to UNIX, and the Internet followed shortly after. By 1992 I had been promoted to quality control engineer and was managing one of their UNIX machines. I had full access to the Internet from work and from home. That's when I discovered MUCKs and soon was hooked on FurryMUCK. My character, Fuffle, was a vaguely canine and very shaggy creature who never spoke and was strictly an in-character mime. He lasted for years.

However, if you mean by "active" in the furry community that I had interpersonal connections with other furs outside of the MUCK, that didn't happen until much later, and followed upon the WildSpirits experience mentioned above. There is a good deal of discussion of all this in my own early LJ entries, and if you want to pursue the details, feel free to go back and read my postings from March, April, and May of 2004. None of them are locked in any way.

4. How many horses live with you or on your property?

Presently three registered Haflingers. Two thirteen-year-old geldings, Asher and Archie, are half brothers and have been together all their lives. They are trained as a driving team and I own them jointly with my mate, who selected them in 1999 believing that he wanted to drive horses rather than ride them. We did some driving, and I enjoyed it perhaps more than he, but harnessing a team is a major job, so you tend not to do it as often as you ought. Then in 2001, while preparing for his debut as a driver in an actual show competition, the boys ran away with my partner and wrecked both wagon and harness by going on either side of a 60 foot tall oak tree. Very luckily, Gary was thrown free and had only bruises, but he could have been killed or crippled. The horses were unhurt but have not been driven since. They are sweet and gentle pets. Gary has lost interest in driving as a result of that incident, which traumatized him badly.

The other is my mare, Tess, now ten or eleven years old (I've lost track, she seems ageless anyway.) She was pregnant when I acquired her at a farm closing auction in Wisconsin, and her filly foal was born here in June of 2003. We named the filly Cherokee Dawn and I went from my original intention of selling her as soon as she was weaned to the mistaken notion that I could keep her. But I am not sufficiently skilled as a trainer to start a foal from scratch, and it eventually became clear that we had a disaster on our hands. Neither of us could keep her in hand and as she matured physically she started to become risky to handle. Back in May I gave her to a friend who has 20 acres, a dozen horses, and a lot more experience. Even he has now farmed her out for some training because she is so headstrong.

Tess herself is quite easy to handle, pleasant to ride when I find time to do it, and both friendly and affectionate. I could give the boys up to a good home without feeling too bad, though I'd miss Asher particularly. I am very attached to Tess, though, and couldn't let her go so easily.

5. Do you have any advice for me currently that you can draw from your experience? (being that you're older and probably much wiser) It can be on any topic, or general.

I'm not sure I know you well enough to offer much specific advice. I like your artwork, and think you should continue with it even if it isn't doing much for your finances at the moment. Mostly, I think, I'd give you the same generic advice I generally give to people your age:

Life is not a road race. You have time, take advantage of it. Don't try to achieve everything at once. Good things are worth waiting for, and the practice of patience is good for the character, as well as making the end that much sweeter when you do achieve it. Fruit picked too soon is likely to be hard and bitter. Much better to wait for it to ripen fully and give yourself a chance to really know what you want.

Thoughtful questions, longish answers I'm afraid.