Mike,
With regards to the issue of memory on a battery, that was solved years ago. While I 100% agree with the way you said to fully charge the battery with no load the first time, I disagree with fully discharging the battery.
Your best practice is to charge a battery when you have the chance and always charge it fully. While a battery can be taken down to zero charge a couple hundred times, the battery can be fully charged from a less than zero state many thousands of times.
For the life of your battery, you are better off not letting it fully deplete itself and charging it up fully vs taking the battery to zero before fully charging it.
Take Care,
Richard