Helping hands reach out

Soon after a storm ripped through the Calvary Church in Muscatine, tearing apart the ceiling and auditorium and leaving a path of destruction in its wake, church members began showing up to help rebuild. Volunteers were on the scene even before emergency service personnel.

Austin Newton, an audio/visual employee for the church, was at the church during the storm — one of only four who were at the church at that time. About 10 minutes before it hit, he was in the auditorium, testing the sound equipment."The scary thing to think of is I was in the epicenter of where everything happened only moments before," Newton said. "There was no warning. I can't explain how fast everything happened."

By the time the rain began pouring and the winds began to pick up, Newton and a maintenance employee were in the nursery, but quickly ran to the bathroom for safety as the weather intensified. "When we emerged, we heard running water and saw the damage that was done to the building," Newton said. "We found two ladies in the office and helped them get to a safe place."

Soon after the storm cleared, Newton said he helped turn off the power and utilities. Newton said the first person he saw was congregation member Luke Noble, who helped clear computers and office supplies out of the building."Community Bank of Muscatine, the bank that owns the building previously held by Blockbuster (across the street from the church), is allowing us to store some equipment there as we clean up," Newton said.

Ty Thomas, lead pastor at Calvary Church, said he's thankful the church was closed on Mondays and only a few people were in the building at the time.Throughout the oil painting reproduction, fire sprinklers were ripped out, causing around six inches of water to flood the church. Church members from ages 6 to 80 were volunteering to help clean up.

"At least 100 people showed up last night to help clean up debris from the building," Thomas said. "People showed up early Tuesday, too, to help continue cleaning."

Church staff member Susan Orvis said at least 100 people signed up as volunteers Tuesday morning, cleaning up debris in and outside the church, drying the carpet in the building and clearing out damaged furniture and supplies.Thomas said that a few members of the church even volunteered to stay the night to prevent looting.

"There's no church here, but church is more than a building, it's where the people gather," Thomas said, adding that they've rented a tent to hold services outside this Sunday at 10 a.m. in the parking lot. "We're blessed that nobody was hurt."

Monday's storm, which the National Weather Service said included a tornado, left a path of destruction which brought down tree limbs inside the city, as well as traveling along the Douglas King Memorial Expressway, leaving building debris along the way en route to rural Muscatine, where it ravaged Judy and Kenny Connor's farm at 2876 New Era Road.

Judy wasn't home at the time, but she said her husband was."He said he was looking out the window and all of a sudden the barn was gone," Judy said.The family lost two machine sheds, a silo, grain bins and a barn. No livestock was lost, according to Kenny.

 "All of our neighbors and family were here soon after the storm passed to help begin cleaning up," Judy said. "There were a couple of amateur storm chasers here [Monday] night who said that when wood is lodged in the ground and you can't get it out, that winds could have reached up to 180 miles per hour."

Kenny said that as soon as he was able to, he began cleaning up, putting wood in piles to burn and metal in piles to be collected."We're just making it so we can maneuver around," Kenny said. "Some of these buildings were from the 1950s. Sixty years of stuff gone in an instant."

Download progress is shown right there on the screen, with a progress bar right on the tile of the game. And once a game is downloaded it is automatically installed and made ready to play. Originally that was a two step process.

There are a lot of other issues that have been improved. Supposedly there'll be prepaid currency cards available for people who don't want to attach a credit card to their Ouya account. There are rudimentary parental controls in there now (a passcode, basically) though the company plans to continue to improve that system. And you can finally turn the thing off from the controller.

Of course the hardware doesn't matter if the games aren't any good. While I feel like the Ouya library is continually improving, it's still a definite weak point (though I'm hoping we'll see some big launches today); there are still a lot of pretty rough 8-bit style games quickly put together by small teams in the library and you're going to have to open a lot of oysters to find the pearls in there. The good news is that every game (and Ouya claims on their website that there are 168 games in there) has a free component so you can sample them all before spending a dime.

Ouya CEO Julie Urhman did an interview with Polygon yesterday that's worth reading if you're on the fence and want to get an idea of what direction the company is headed in. For instance there are really no social elements (Friend lists, leaderboards, etc) on the Ouya now and adding these features is a pretty big priority for the company.

So should you buy an Ouya today? I think it really depends on how adventurous you are. If you want a game system with a nicely curated list of highly polished games then no, skip the Ouya for now. But if you're the type of gamer who is interested to see what kinds of crazy things Indie game developers can come up with, then you'll probably get your $100 worth of enjoyment out of it.