Veerle: “Like in any aspect of design the attention to details makes a good design perfect. So when all furniture is in place you’ll need some accents to finish it off. It doesn’t come to mind at first instance but there is a fragile beauty called glass. I’ve found a perfect Belgian designer called Anna Torfs that has a gift of breathing life into her colorful glass pieces.”

Here’s a shot of the bathroom–almost done…

Copacetic » Blog Archive » Everything you needed to know about cycling in Dublin: “Yes, if you manage to negotiate the telegraph pole, that is a waste bin behind it.”

Darren Barefoot: “Now, of course, Star Wars borrows heavily from Akira Kurosawa’s The Hidden Fortress. All art is part theft–I just thought Eragon was a particularly egregious example. It’s a pretty bad movie. Malkovich, Carlyle and Irons chew the scenery into sawdust”

Usually the city requires a certified electrician to repair weatherheads–the place that your electrical line connects to your house or building–and that’s been a concern. Today, the mayor said that “the City would not be an impediment to getting your electricity back on” which was great to hear.

Normally, the city utility wouldn’t hook up/reconnect/power up your electrical connection unless a certified electrician inspected the weatherhead and the city approved it. The mayor signed a proclamation that helps to eliminate much of the certification process. That’s not to say that the rest of the inspection isn’t needed, but at least for the next 30 days, a competent electrician can get “certified” by the city and get people helped.

The reason this is so important is underscored in this example:

Four homes are powered by one transformer. Three of the homes have no weatherhead damage but one does. The three homes that are fine would have to wait until the fourth house is fixed before getting power back.

I’m in that situation now. On person has to get their weatherhead fixed and based on what I’ve seen, I won’t get power for at least another week.

I want to cry.

http://www.ci.springfield.mo.us/community/tv23/index.html

Get your news updates directly from the city. They’ve been digitizing the updates and posting them pretty quickly. I’m at work right now so I can download these for later.

Daring Fireball Linked List: “Did you notice the nice ring tone Steve Jobs demoed on the iPhone during the keynote? DF reader Andrew Neesley translated it and made it into a MIDI file. I dig it.”

BTW, I downloaded this direct to my Treo 650 to tide me over until I can get iPhone’d…

Zarah writes of her sixth day without power: “Luckily we’ve got a warm place to stay, but I’m worried about the pipes freezing, and it’s really inconvenient not to be in your own house, and now they’re saying on the news that thieves are breaking into the darkened homes, so I’m worried about that too.”

I can sympathize. We’re on day seven with no real end in site and snow is definitely on the way. As far as looters, two police cars caught someone in our neighborhood last night–doing who knows what–and it required two police cars to get them “moving along”.

As far as patience, I’m out of it. I’m not angry with the utilities or the work crews, but I need to go back to my routine out of concern for my sanity. One of our cats cried all night, keeping Tammy and I from getting more than an hour of sleep at a time. Now I know how new parents must feel…

Tammy went down to check on the cats and found that the heater had tripped power strip’s breaker. In two hours, the temp had dropped 5 degrees, making the idea that they were safe less palatable. In one of the most stressful situations, Tammy and I rescued the cats, forcing them in to any bag we could find, then driving them to our temporary shelter.

Imagine that in the middle of the night, woke you up, placed a bag over your head, put you in a mysterious noise-making room and then hauled you to another new place. Stressful, eh?

As a modern human, one tends to forget just how much we rely on electricity. Right now, my house temperature is 41ËšF and there’s little hope that we’ll see power restored before Friday this week. I’m typing this post and uploading via my Sprint Treo 650 acting as a Bluetooth modem, another reminder of what life was like before DSL.

Man, it’s *too easy* to forget the past and take the benefits of today for granted. Never having been this kind of mass disaster victim, I couldn’t identify with them. This week, I’ve learned that lesson and it’s one that I won’t soon forget.

I’m going to figure out a way to go solar with some of my heating and power needs so this won’t happen to me in the future. Heating a home to 60ËšF with solar would be easier than living on the prayer that my free electricity at my friends house doesn’t give out.

See, that’s the worst of it. I’m safe now, but it could change at any moment. A sickening feeling, for sure. The low temp tonight is 9ËšF and we won’t see temps above freezing until Friday. I’m praying for the electric company work crews.