Whoa, that's scary. I always run a quick loop check against my calibrator after any update now.

The random firing is doing way more damage than just messing up your timing, it's basically scrambling how the stacking software aligns the frames. When the intervals jump around, the star positions shift between shots in a way that's not smooth, so the alignment algorithm starts pulling in data from different points in the rotation. That's where the purple comes from, it's not a white balance issue, it's the stars smearing across the color channels because they don't line up cleanly. You might be able to salvage it by sorting the frames by actual capture time if your files have timestamps, then stacking only the ones that are close together. But honestly, those budget remotes are notorious for this, I had one that would fire three times in a row and then skip ten seconds, totally useless for anything beyond a quick test. If you're set on shooting that many frames again, I'd just use the built-in intervalometer on your camera if it has one, or even shoot in bursts and sort it out later, it saves you a headache.

Three bucks at a yard sale turned that paperweight into a doorstop for my shop, @the_diana, so at least it finally found a job it's actually good at.

Ditched the FedEx drop box completely after a similar nightmare with a client's wedding menus last spring. Now I only use the counter inside the print shop or the actual post office lobby, where there's a real person who can see what's happening. I also started taking a photo of every batch right before I drop it off, just so I have time stamps and proof if something goes wrong. It's a pain in the ass but it's saved me twice since then, once when a box was jammed and once when a shipment just vanished. Honestly, the extra ten minutes of walking inside is way cheaper than redoing 60 wax seals.

...and honestly that's exactly what my buddy Dave went through last year. He runs a small print shop up in Ohio, and he had a client who paid for the fancy proofing on these huge posters for a trade show. The color was way off when the posters finally showed up, like the blues had this weird purple cast to them. So Dave, he took one of the rejected posters, cut it down, and taped it next to his monitor at home. He spent a whole weekend just tweaking his screen settings until the colors on his screen matched that printed sheet, not the proofing file. Next job he did for that same client, he used his new screen setup and walked the pressman through the color check right on the machine. It was a rough lesson, but now he tells everyone to just skip the fancy proof and do a test run on the actual press, even if it costs a little extra. Saves a whole lot of headache and money in the long run.