I don't do KFC and haven't for 30 years.. but it's mainly because my wife's sister worked at KFC during her high school days and constantly smelled like fried chicken. I was so sick of the smell that I couldn't tolerate KFC and still can't. I do Popeyes or one of the other brands. Also, I have issues with PepsiCo which owns KFC.

I have the Adobe Cloud Photo plan ($9.99 per month) and it has 10gb of "in cloud" storage. The ONLY thing that I use the Adobe Cloud storage for is to transfer images from my cell phone to the computer or to transfer images from my computer LR to the phone. I love the Cloud / LR /Photoshop though and use it multiple times per day. I have been a member since it was first introduced (having initially purchased Adobe LR on disc. I highly recommend the Cloud... By the way, when I've had "special projects", Adobe has allowed be it increase my Cloud apps temporarily while doing the projects. I had the Full Cloud for about 3 months then they allowed me to go back to the $9.99 plan after the project was through. They also told me that, if my needs arise again, they will be happy up provide the "temporary" upgrade. And, yes, for the 3 months, I did have to pay the full $65 per month (or whatever that price was for the full package per month) but it was minor compared to purchasing Dreamweaver, Illustrator, Behance and InDesign individually or paying the full Cloud price indefinitely.

Both the Skyline drive and the Blue Ridge Parkway have excellent spots to pull over and get shots.. Also there are some areas that are excellent for parking the car and hiking/walking for a half mile or so in either direction and getting shots. At various places along both, (assuming you have the time to putter), don't be afraid to get off the "Parkway/Skyline Drive" and go down into the surrounding towns for excellent photo ops. We took the "backroads" from Florida up to Warminster PA (just northwest of Philly) last year before last and got excellent photo ops.. Also did it coming down a trip before that. We basically roamed the areas from 95, Route 17, and 81. We also used a lot of the "back roads".
So, if you have time, don't be afraid to explore the areas, towns, etc. that are off the beaten path along the way. I even found a small antiques place (Near Monticello) that had a sign paintesd on their truck saying, "Antiques, made fresh daily." I have a photo of it somewhere. lol. It was a long trip and we took several days for it. But it was a lot of fun and got to see some excellent places.

Two things... first the serial number on the barrel isn't necessarily the best resource... secondly... Nikon's "initial" phone people are quoting from a script. I used to be a part of Nikon's "Nikon Professional Services (NPS) group. They deal ONLY with Nikon professional photographers that are members. Occasionally (like during the Christmas / holiday rush period, we would also deal with "escalated" questions. But, primarily the answer given was the correct one. Nikon does need to have the lens come in and be verified by other means as many 3rd party sellers (etc.) are changing the worn out guts on valid barrels to cheep knockoffs and then trying to get Nikon Service to "fix" the issue. Nikon is responding by wanting to see the actual product to A: verify if it is authentic or not. and B: if it isn't authentic, gather info to go after the people performing the fraud. If the lens was tampered with, Nikon would then ask for more information about where it came from, who worked on it last, etc.

I have had both the "stand alone" version of Lightroom (purchased before the "cloud", and have to Photography version of the "Cloud". The Cloud is constanly kept upto date and is great. Note: I almost never use the "Cloud Storage" option except to transfer a copy of photos from my computer to my wife's or to the laptops. But I do use the Lightroom and Photoshop programs constantly. I upload, cull and process all of my photos in Lightroom and then selectivly use Photoshop for further processing of those that may need it or to combine elements of two separate photos. The Cloud is nice because the base version allows it to be active on two separate computers at the same time. If a third computer is attempting to start the same cloud login, the program tells the user that it's already in use on two computers and offers to log out of one or both of the others before allowing you to continue. This allows me to have the Cloud installed on my two desktops, 3 laptops (all here in Florida) and two other desktops in Pennsylvania that get used about 30 day out of each year and keeps me from having to buy additional logins or another subscription. This is a great deal for $9.99 per month. Oh, and I use a 4tb usb 3.0 drive to transfer importand images from one to the other as needed.

John,

While I don't know about your location and the risks there, I am 66 and in Clearwater/Largo Florida. I have a significant investment in cameras and lenses and regularly go to the local nature preserves, beaches, monuments and such for photos. I generally carry my Nikon D7100 and D610, with several lenses in a photography backpack, my wife also uses her Nikon D7000 and we generally have two tripods. I have yet (of course after stating this it will probably happen today or tomorrow) to be acossted or have anything damaged or stolen by others. I regularlary carry my cameras and a couple of spare lenses to auto races at Daytona, Sebring, etc., boat races at Clearwater and Saint Petersburg, and other events across Florida, Georgia, the gulf area and lower east coast. I mainly try to stay out of crowds (for the photography as well as safety) and keep an eye out for anything suspisious. AND, everything is insured. The main thing is to be aware of the surroundings and an eye on the people around you. It also doesn't hurt to take a cell phone photo of people that you feel might be acting suspisously. This way you have something to show the police if something happens. Oh, and if someone happens to see you take a cell phone photo of them, there is No Expectation of privacy in a public place.. so they and complain all they want but it doesnt mean anything.. And sometimes, the person that shouts the loudest has the most to hide.

I remember that completely. Then Xerox and Apple got into a pissing war about the "Lisa" interface being stolen from (was it Star?) which was a joint Apple/Xerox effort. At one time there was an cute and (at the time) not entirely wrong cartoon showing an Apple being attacked by a Starship with lots of small Darth Vaders going into space from the Starship toward the Apple ship to invade. IBM (at the time) was doing everything in their power to kill Apple.
While I am not an Apple fan, having seen both sides (Apple and IBM Dos and gui interfaces) I am now a Windows (stolen from Apple) fan and hate Apple for what they could have been had they opened their programing avaiability to others early in their development as PC Dos did. And yes, I remember the DOS/Apple battles over operating systems... I even had a z-80 interface so that I could run CPM on my Apple.. I even had a Corvus 10mb hard drive.. wow!! 10 whole megabytes... nearly $10k at the time... LOL!
Then I went to work as a Systems Engineer and Quality Control Engineer for Magnetic Peripherals on their "Phoenix" line in Oklahoma City, 96 Mbytes and about the size of a 2 drawer filing cabinet. Was designed then had Kodak, NCR, IBM, and everybody's ID plates on it.

I used to manage a multi-brand computer store back in the early 1980's (carried Compaq, HP, NEC, Pet and others, then an all Apple store back during the Apple II, Apple II+, Apple III, Lisa days... even got to go to Cupertino on the "Dealer Advisory Board" at Apple's HQ. This was back when Jobs and Woz were running the show and had to take the occasional "Doobie" break.. lol

Yes and I had a ton of Apple stock that I "managed to sell" in the "down" period for about .10 a share and thought that I got a decent deal.. now Apple is $216.00 a share. I was bailing when it looked like they were going the way of Sinclair, Pet, and others.

Neither have low pass filters.. you can ALWAYS check the specs for the cameras on https://www.nikonimgsupport.com/ni?ctry=US&lang=en_US

While this is true, in addition to limitations of quantity or size in the "Cloud", I never use it. I have 20tb of images on my catalog, and the wife has a separate 8tb of images on hers.. all using the "same" Adobe Cloud id. (we use separate computers and separate storage but same "master" login to Adobe). This works fine. When we return from trips, we transfer all images taken on the trips back to the two master catalogs and continue from there. By the way.. on trips, we each have a 4tb USB3 portable drive to connect to our laptops, this makes transferring to the "main" catalogs at home easy.

You can use 2 active computers/Adobe Cloud at any given time.. However you can have it on unlimited computers as long as only 2 are active at a time. I have it on 3 desktops and 5 laptops at any given time.

But, if you read the service agreement before you send the camera in, it explains that the process it to repair/replace ANY defects in the camera... not just what you found. Nikon does NOT want to guarantee any "partial" repairs. They guarantee the entire camera for x months after the repair.. not just what was fixed.

It depends on your point of view. Nikon warrantees any repairs done on Nikon cameras by a Nikon repair facility. Nikon repairs by non-Nikon shops were causing a lot of grief because the "customer" did NOT understand that something fixed on their Nikon by Joes camera and ice cream shop was NOT warrantied by Nikon themselves. I know that it is inconvenient but Nikon was having to refix issues that were not really part of their domain, and taking the blame for xyz camera shop's sloppy work. Now, Nikon ONLY warranties work done by Nikon and they do NOT provide Nikon parts to non-Nikon repair facilities. You, the camera users, caused the issues by complaining about shoddy Nikon workmanship from non-Nikon repair facilities.

While the D7000 is a nice camera, it is so old that replacing the USB port is probably not worth the trouble. Look at KEH or some of the other places (Adorama and B&H) for used D7000 cameras. I bought a D7000 for my wife a year or so ago and it cost me about $250 and was (is) in excellent shape. The current price seems to run between $100 and $350 depending on grade. It will probably cost that or more to replace the USB and then you still won't know what else you will run into. KEH, Adorama, B&H and others usually provide a warrantee on their used cameras.