I’m in the same spot. Ended up just buying a cheap SSD and dual booting with windows 10. It’s definitely not as convenient as it could be, but it works perfectly.

Probably too close to the bed. The gap between your nozzle and your printing surface isn’t big enough, so some of the filament isn’t able to escape and builds up in blobs. Check if the patters’s any worse/more noticeable towards the middle.

I’ve had trouble logging in on liftoff, it doesn’t recognize any of the instances I have accounts on.