He ate last Saturday night and again tonight (Saturday) with no trouble at all, which makes me think the temperature may be okay for him.
Whether or not a ball feeds is probably a good first indication that something might be "off" with your husbandry. If your temps are 82-84 / 92-94, you're fine.

In addition to what was said above, the human heat pads should be left for a more "temporary" heating setup- those human pads are not designed to run 24/7 and will fail eventually, either shutting off completely without warning or overheating and burning out, possibly burning your snake.

The ZooMed UTH is a step up, but as explained above, still must be controlled with a thermostat or dummer.

Also, he's really timid and jumpy sometimes. If I go to touch his neck, he recoils. Is that more typical of the breed, the age, the newness of me, or just his temperament.
That is a behavior that is very typical of ball pythons, very normal.

Finally, does anyone recommend those temp scanner things that you can just point at the snake to get their temp?
The infared thermometers you speak of are supposedly no more accurate than your standard acu-rite thermometers...with the exception of the very expensive infared guns that HVAC techs or others like that might use. Those are very expensive and that kind of accuracy is not needed by the average reptile keeper.