Great catches. I'll look into applying those fixes.
In general, I'm cool with anyone making a mod off of mine or modding mine. It may be easier to set your mod to use AricsExpansion as the base (ie: have AricsExpansion loaded first then yours below it to have your mod files change Arics) instead of just patching and re-releasing the whole AricsExpansion with your changes as that will involve reworking your mod every time AricsExpansion is patched/updated, but I'm cool with either. Have at it and I look forward to seeing what ya come up with!
Edit: Fixes applied to v0.9.8. Love the notes on the bugs and you made it exceptionally easy for me to grab and apply those quickly. I appreciate the help!