First of all, welcome to the forum!




After seeing what you and others have said about the book... heh... well, I'm a bit more inclined to up my warm side temps from the 79-88, to the ~90 along with the corresponding cold side temps. But I'm not totally convinced due to some of the behavior my snake is showing. Let me restate that I'm completely new to this.
Do you happen to know when this book was published? The longer ball pythons are kept in captivity, the more information that is learned from them, so information that may have been considered correct even 5 or 10 years ago, continues to be re-evaluated as more information is learned about them.

Two books that you may want to also pick up, are The Complete Ball Python, by Kevin McCurley of NERD (New England Reptile Distributors) published in 2005, and Pythons of the World, Vol II: Ball Pythons by Barker and Barker of VPI published in 2006.

My snake spends the entire day in the cold hide. I have a feeling this is due to two things - the snake's natural instinct, and the light being to friggin' bright. But at night... he still spends a lot of time in the cold hide (in 73-78ish temps). This is away from the lamp and the heating pad, and there isn't anything in the room scaring him to that side. Yeah, he'll come up and bask on top of the warm hide, but he doesn't say up there all the time (implying to me that he isn't really cold).
You mentioned that the hides were not identical. Have you tried switching the hides, with the one he's currently using the to warm side to see if he still chooses that hide? Ball pythons will choose security over thermoregulating.

Also, why the elimination of the day-night cycle? Is it because most of you don't use heating lights like I'm currently using (as opposed to ceramic heat emitters)? The light controlled day thing doesn't matter with sufficient natural light? Also, one of the terrarium stickies I read about containing heat with tin foil seemed to leave no room at all for effective ventilation.
Natural light provide enough of a day-night cycle. I don't use any supplemental lighting and provide all my heating through UTH's. You mentioned a heat pad - is it a human heat pad, or a true UTH? Are you controlling it with a thermostat? I found that lights really made keeping humidity up a challenge when I used a 20 gallon long tank - I've now since converted all of mine to tubs or a rack set up.

Another question that I didn't see on the forum... I know that this is probably a very VERY obvious one, but I'm assuming it's bad to bug the snake in the hide, right? Like lifting it up when he's in it (in the event that it's a small box)?
I do lift my hides when I'm checking over every one, or if I want to handle one of them. I usually give them a light touch on their side (since you can't tell if they're sleeping) to let them know I'm there and not startle them.

He already fed on a thawed pinky the one time I tried, no problem there. This was about 2 hours after I ended the day cycle.
Was this a pinky mouse or pinky rat? Most ball pythons are capable of eating a small rat pup or mouse hopper as their very first meal. A pinky mouse is really not much more than an appetizer, even for a baby ball python.

I hope I've answered most of your questions - I'm sure I've probably missed a few, please don't hesitate to continue to ask questions - it's how we all learn.

And again - welcome!