For the most part I am very pleased with the printer. It prints much better than I had anticipated.
Yes that is the first layer. The outside lines are the skirt...I always print a skirt to prime the extruder. The top pic is with a 0.6 Extra Restart Distance. The bottom pic is with a 0.0 Extra Restart Distance. You can see the 0.6 is much better so a negative restart value is only going to make things worse.
I only print from SD card. I use my computer for gaming so I don't want any extra resources being taken up by the printer...or any crash caused by a game to interrupt my print. So it is safest if I use the SD card.
As for the blob, if you refer to the one circled in blue in the attached pic that is from where I stopped the printer. If you are talking about the one circled in green...I don't know why it does that. I only know that when I put in a restart distance that goes away.
There are 3 parts printing at once...the pics are from the part printing in the back right hand side of the print bed. The print for that piece starts at the red circled area and prints around counter clockwise. I don't notice any pause in the printer at that point. The area where there is no extrusion or it looks like it didn't adhere is actually the starting point of the print for that piece. Hence why I put the extra restart distance in it.
I thought about what you said about needing a clean nozzle when switching materials so I put a brand new nozzle on...I'm still having issues with holes in the print I really wish I could figure out what is causing them...