Sorry to hear about that. I hope you find a good job soon.
I've always been afraid of being stuck in a situation like that, but it has not happened to me yet. I keep getting lucky.
In other news, I have just performed open-heart surgery on my iRiver H120 music player. I've had this wee beasty since either 2001 or 2002; can't quite remember. I've already replaced the battery successfully 3 times and the HDD once, but it was all simple replacing of the original for a near-exact replacement out of necessity (battery died, HDD crashed). This was just... BECAUSE I CAN.

1.8" HDD miniaturization over the last decade has been fantastic to put it lightly. I can now fit a 120 GB HDD into the same space that a 20GB HDD barely fit 12-13 years ago. 600% improvement. The interface has changed a bit, though. My H120 was expecting a 40-pin low-insertion-force connection, not the ZIF ATA connector currently en vogue. Fortunately, I was able to find an adapter for that. Had to translate a bit of Korean, but you can use google for that.
Then had to find a firmware patch that was able to talk to this new HDD. Rockbox to the rescue. Had to read and re-read several manuals and spend some time pouring over 5-year-old forum posts by enthusiasts of various levels of competence, but it's working like a champ now!
It's been literally years since I took on a project like this. I must say, that was a lot of fun! My tinkering skill-set is very rusty from disuse, but it was all coming back by the end.