So far, I've been pretty good at setting this thing up.  I could use some help with this one though.  I run the auto bed leveler and everything seems fine. The first layer though obviously is close to the nozzle towards the back of the machine.  It goes from a nice first layer in the front to the extruder motor skipping steps towards the back of the machine.  Any ideas how to fix this?  Should I manually level the bed a bit?

Right now there seem to be 4 possible causes for the motor skipping; z-axis backlash, a loose motor shaft, uncalibrated trimpots, and a damaged acme screw.

There's definitely backlash for everyone, to what degree that it is impacting you probably varies.  Someone posted a fix by adding springs to the z-axis carriage that put constant downward tension on the build platform.  This probably doesn't work so hot at the extreme end of the z-axis so a better solution is in order.

The easiest to troubleshoot and fix is the loose motor shaft as it requires no dis-assembly.  User rrssll has a thread with more details.

An uncalibrated trimpot would need to be adjusted on the control board and requires dis-assembly.  There are a couple threads here identifying the trimpots and how to calibrate them correctly.

A damaged screw is the most unlikely and would probably need to be sent to Solidoodle for repair.  If you're only getting skipping at 1 exact spot this might be your problem, if it happens at any height then it's probably not.  You can gain access to the screw by removing some screws on either side of the Z-Axis motor and removing the panel behind the build plate.  That will allow you to inspect the screw.