Here I was a few months back stating that 2022 would be a fantastic year, then my company gets notice about being acquired right before Christmas.  For professional reasons, I’ll keep it to the new company has no interest in operating in our current location, and anyone not interested in moving to another state will be terminated at some point.  This has left me scrambling on what to do now for employment.

For a while after the announcement, it left me in a funk and angry at mine and my coworker’s situation.  It is crummy thinking about the work that all of us have put in over the years, essentially going down the toilet.

Then came the realization – I’ve put myself in a precarious position of getting too comfortable.  I’ve been at this company for almost 16 years and thought it wouldn’t change, which isn’t how life works.  I should have been spending time getting certifications and continuing to learn new aspects of IT.  I should have taken time to work through fallback options – keep my name out with open positions and see what else I could do, or what I need to learn to be able to slot in at another organization.  Create “side hustles” where I can keep some income flowing through in case my main gig goes kaput.  Main lesson learned, do not get complacent that things will never change.

In a way, this is for the best, and I do believe 2022 will be a fantastic year.  It’s the year I become better than what I am now.  Since I have time, I’m going to commit to creating articles each month about projects I’m working on.  Speaking of those projects, the first is going back to my Ben Eater 8 bit and 6502 builds, namely the clock module.  I have the PCB designed from late 2020 but did not finalize it and send it off for printing at JLCPBC.  I’m not a PCB designer, so I still need to figure out how ground planes and 5v should be delivered throughout the board, which is where the delay came from.

I also need to write about what I’ve done with the BE6502 build.  I’ve gotten the EEPROM running and output going to LEDs for 8 of the bits from the VIA.  Added a power-on reset feature, as the 6502 needs to be reset after power-on in order to initialize.  That wasn’t a part of what Ben had done with his 6502, so I feel pretty good on making that work (even used the 74HC00 to make it work as a constraint).

For you the reader, take care of yourself this year and do like I’m doing and put a priority towards what happens if everything hits the fan.  Put family and friends first.  I spent more time working and getting projects completed over my personal life.  If I could redo that, I would.

Cheers!