Just to report in since we got off track and this is supposed to be about the Auto-Leveling mod, I'm printing a part that takes the full print envelope (in x and y) and the first layer that went down is spectacular. I seem to always get a squiggly first layer and kind of deformed areas. It never affected the part but it was unsightly. I did all kinds of experiments with flow rate and filament diameter tweaks and a host of other things and could never quite get it to look nice. Even as carefully as I manually leveled my bed with the screws on the corners of the bed, I guess I just could never get it perfect. Now it's perfect and it shows.

I'll stop gushing about Auto-Leveling soon but for now I can't help myself.