I’m a child of the 1980s. 

With side ponytails on full hairsprayed display, my big sister and I kept busy making mixed tapes, riding banana seat bicycles and collecting plastic charms for our charm necklaces. We stayed up late watching “Dirty Dancing” and “Indiana Jones,” swooning over Patrick Swayze and Harrison Ford. We heated our food in BPA-laden plastic, drank from hoses and ran around our neighborhood for hours before returning home happy and spent and ready to hurriedly eat dinner so we could be in front of the TV by 8 p.m. to watch “Who’s the Boss” or “Growing Pains.” 

Computer systems at the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians are down this week after a tribal employee allegedly attacked the network with ransomware on Saturday, Dec. 7. 

Getting impatient waiting for private providers or the government to help in the effort to bring high-speed internet service to its rural communities, Macon County commissioners approved funding to support two community initiated projects already underway. 

With a new school year just begun, the 300 students who participate in Waynesville Middle School’s robust agriculture program now have an array of new woodshop equipment at their disposal. 

“In two weeks this will be like Santa’s little helper’s woodshop,” Noal Castater, agriculture teacher at WMS since 2010, said in an interview the Friday before the first day of school. 

A proposal to build a new cell tower off of Skyland Drive in Sylva will go before the Jackson County commissioners for approval during a quasi-judicial hearing at 1 p.m. Tuesday, Feb. 26, in room A201 of the Jackson County Justice and Administration Building. 

More than 150 Haywood County Schools fourth- and fifth-grade students chased after zooming robots at the Wolfpack Robothon on Friday, November 30.

Last night I read Harold and the Purple Crayon to my 5-year-old. He sat wide-eyed with an expression of intrigue as we learned about Harold drawing an imaginative world with his crayon.

Wouldn’t it be nice to have a crayon or a pen or a pencil and create a world that’s easier or happier? It certainly would. But that’s not the way real life works.

Ugh.

The moment my girlfriend handed over my soaking wet smart phone, a shiver of isolation ran up my spine. That’s the last time I try to sneak a water bottle of cheap domestic beer in her purse into a bluegrass show, let alone have my phone also in said purse for “safe keeping.”

Who you going to trust, Apple or Uncle Sam? By deciding not to obey a court order to unlock the iPhone phone of San Bernardino terrorist Syed Rizwan Farook, Apple says it’s taking a stand for privacy against government intrusion. The company insists breaching Farook’s iPhone security system would be tantamount to opening the floodgates and endangering the security of the data on millions of phones.

Though it can make certain aspects of life easier, technology often has unintended consequences.