I don't know, I don't know what a mendicant is. He's one of the few in a group of friends that I consider my true family before I started my own with my wife, my own family broke up when I was around 15 due to divorce and so I gathered my own of people who loved/trusted/had fun with each other. Groo and me hung out together for years, for a whole year while I worked a midnight shift at a 24/7 shop, like a 7-11 or White Hen but not one of those, although I have worked at both too. This was called "Busy Bee" and was privately owned. Oddly enough my other friend who's nickname was/is "Poof" and got me the job there now runs his own comic shop down in Florida and is exceedingly happy which pleases me to know end. (Double-oddly, his name is "Jeff" in real life too)
Oh that whole year I worked there we tripped almost every night I worked. It was a new place that was VERY slow, I would go some nights without getting any customers at all and a busy night was about 2 dozen in an 8 hour shift and most of those were early morning ones for cigarettes.(They were $0.85us a pack back then, swore I'd quit when they got over a buck. 1985-6?) The owners of the place were a married couple who were "old" hippies. (in retrospect they were in their late 20s-early 30s which seems super young now but I was 19-20 back then) They taught us the ways of the Dead and the proper parking lot etiquette and ways to get the best deals and to tell posers from real heads, and warned me of the harsh realities that my magical happy wonderland still had scam artist running around ripping off tripping rich kids left and right. They saved me from a number of scams, good people!
Groo finally brought me his "dead" computer to fix. It just blinked at him when he turned it on. It's a
POS HP, but I made it in to much less of one. He'd never uninstalled any of the pre-installed bloatware and while 6GB sounds like enough for windows 10 you have to realize his PC is basically a laptop in a desktop box and he has no graphics memory so it's shared with the system memory and with all the shite running in the background it had its HDD at 100% usage all the time and had lag in just moving the mouse!
I cleaned out the bloat and malware, (only 38 hits with Malwarbyte, not bad), and updated it from 2016 to the latest 1903 update. It was a legal copy, felt so weird. Then I got it more memory since it's a funky type of DDR3 that's only 1.35v and 2x8GB were only $55us. For some reason I could only get 1 stick working, and I picked up another set just to make sure but out of the 4 sticks only one works in it. So I went ahead with an 4GB & 8GB since it worked and it seems to be enough to make a dramatic difference. The system now has enough memory to operate freely without needing constant virtual ram HDD activity and the graphics are great at playing back videos and web cruising which is all he wants it for. The difference between how he got it originally and what I sent him back should be enough to give him a really good "WOW!" and make me smile.
I also loaded it up with 687GB of various bits of entertainment off our systems so he can have a small library to choose from should his internet go down. (He's got Netflix and Prime, so he's pretty well covered.
)
Yesterday I refigured out how to do my basketball net and almost punched myself in the face for how simple it is. Instead of any stupid support structure building I'll just use the plastic base it came with and cut a bit of an access hole in to it so I can slide a backing plate on to the three bolts that will protrude through the bottom of the plastic once I cut the holes then the backer plate (probably an old PC side) will go on then I nut it down with washers. Take the first section off the pole and drill some holes in its base to mount it to the original base the same way it was, then add the supports back on to the base and figure out a way to attach them to the pole or backboard.
Only slight troublesome bit will be the handle, but I can either cut it short, lock it in position, or set up a pin system to hold in place in case I want to vary it later.
Thought of it all while jury rigging the broken plastic wheels on my grill after straightening its axle. Got a little frustrated last year waiting for my son to help and might have bumped it down some steps a bit roughly then shoved it in to the garage and said "FUCK IT! I'll deal with it next year" and then next year came this morning because my wife decided we should enjoy the day by grilling out and sitting on the porch...just as soon as I get the grill working and all the porch furniture out of the basement and on to the porch and cleaned up, THEN I get to work on the net.
And it's 3:50pm on July 4th... ROFL
