I had someone ask a little while ago how I test my aircraft for performance, and I said that I rarely do, unless there is something very specific that I'm looking for. Instead, I just program the only way I know how, which is to conserve resources like it's maybe 2010. As for the numbers, the impact is small, but they all add up with everything else. The blinking is an addition test that must be performed on every loop, regardless of the blink state, for every single indicator that would blink. If it's supposed to only blink for ~10 seconds before coming steady, that's another counter that has to be incremented for every single indicator on every loop, and another test to see if it's supposed to become steady. When it's blinking, writing to the screen is the most resource consuming of all.