Subject: Re: The good old days ...
My remaining shares are either in 401k (no options) or taxable (don't wanna risk selling).

I will mention the obvious here. When someone exercises an option and you are assigned, you don't have to deliver the shares that have been in your account for a long time and have large embedded capital gains. You can instead buy new shares and deliver those. You just have to decide quickly. Let's say you sold July 430 strike calls and they get assigned over the weekend. You can buy shares at ~441, deliver those to the option holder, and then they will pay you 430 for them, and you suffer a loss of ~11 per share. If you received more than 11 for those calls when you sold them, then you will be net positive. But you don't have to dispose of your long-term held shares.