No I'd never use a 555 timer but I though about something along the same lines. In the past, the way way past, I had a project that used some really high stability and acurate timing IC's. I think the part number began with Z.
Anyway, I do agree that hardware is the way to go for the 0 and 1uS delay.

I've never used a PIC timer or a ccp so this should be good for learning.