Gymnastics and 50,000 shutter releases

The Nikon D80 is rated for 50,000 shutter releases. That means after 50 thousand clicks of the shutter there is a chance that it will start to fail. Well mine started to fail yesterday during the gymnastics competition and I was not happy about it. I was still able to capture about 1000 good images, but the thing that struck me was how quickly this camera started to fail on me. I have only had this camera for 14 months (conveniently after the warranty is up of course.) I guess Nikon will be giving my camera a tuneup soon. This also gives me a great opportunity to upgrade to the D300.

Dead Pixel

Dead Pixel

While my friend Kevin is taking awesome pictures of the sunset in California, I am at home attempting to see things around the house in a different way. The sunset here in Michigan was equally stunning, and had I not been doing my day job I could have captured it's brilliance. Instead, this clock was the choice for today's post.

I have a dead pixel on my D80 camera that is almost in the center of the frame and it's really starting to annoy me.

Once the file is converted to jpg the pixel deformation is not as noticeable, but I still know it's there. Is a dead pixel on a brand new Nikon D80 camera a normal thing? Should I have it repaired or will that make it worse?