This scene was more compositing stuff than actually doing any real work. Most of the stuff was downloaded. I know there are some details that could be better, but time was getting tight and as much as I enjoyed multiple-hour long renderings, I eventually just called it done.
I like the lighting, with the soft shadows and such. In fact, the ONLY shadows explicitly set was from the window. All the other soft shadows were totally from photon calculations. That's pretty much the reason why it took so long (even though 3 hours isn't really much).
I did this in a couple of days, hence downloaded models and missing wires
for an art class. I got to print it out with the school's gigantic inkjet on 12x18", so that was cool. If you take a look at the gallery it's in, there are "developmental" images that show blatantly unrealistic GI (without final gather) and 3d mistakes.
The hourglass was downloaded - who knows if it was made from a tutorial.
BTW, the volumetric lights were added in Photoshop. I couldn't get them working right in max.