PaulS: as you can see, I'm new at this, so please bear with me. I also see that I obviously didn't proofread the last save of my sketch before posting it here, which was stupid on my part.
Regarding the ctrlKey and shiftKey variables- I see I screwed that up and have two shift keys. You're right, there is no point to the modKey comparison. It's supposed to be =, not ==. I'll go through my code again and look for similar mistakes.
I see what you mean about the debounce function, I wrote it and it worked so I left it be. Same goes for the binary count. I never said it was efficient or artful. It worked so I left it alone.
I do welcome your observations though since I am looking at this as a learning exercise.