This Halloween for work, I decided to dress up as Trevor Linden, campaigning to be Mayor. Trevor Linden has always been my favourite Canucks player. Check my previous post on the Canucks, for a picture of when I met Trevor I have a great “Linden for Mayor” t-shirt that I was holding up all day at work today but unfortunately I forgot to bring it home with me.

I didn’t have a lot of time to put together a costume this year since I just came back from my trip, so I kinda went for the lazy costume. However, it is my own jersey and all my own hockey gear, so I think that counts for something, right? It wasn’t this revealing for work; I was wearing opaque leggings

In past years, I’ve gone as Cortana from the video game Halo (I painted it on myself, and made the Guilty Spark too!), and some other typical ones like the schoolgirl and angel costumes. Fortunately, those cliché Halloween costume times are past and I’m hoping to do more creative and interesting video game costumes in the future.

Tonight, it’ll be off to a house party and I’ll see if I can’t modify my costume to be a little more “party” friendly. I’ll update this post later with pictures.

Photo Credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/djking/64249598/

Now that I’ve got the Halloween stuff out of the way, let’s talk about the tech/video game industry and the Vancouver/world economy. Things aren’t looking so great these days, it seems the high tech industry is a little spooked (har har) this Halloween too. You can read more in my previous post on the Vancouver video game industry. And to clear up all the rumours… no, I don’t work at EA — and I never have.

It looks like Electronic Arts (EA) is going to layoff 400 to 500 employees over the next little while. Ouch. That’s a LOT of people. It’s not looking so great for the folks over at EA’s Burnaby campus, which makes up about a third of the company. In its last quarter, EA reported a loss of $310 Million. And the EA stock tanked today after that news, down almost 5% last time I checked.

And the makers of Just Cause (Avalanche Studios) are going to layoff about half their studio in Sweden after losing a couple contracts.

Retailers everywhere are projecting lower holiday sales and less shoppers/traffic in general, so it’s not looking good for many “boxed” video game sales. I’m sure we will see this affect other Vancouver video game companies and high tech companies soon, even though video game sales do traditionally quite well in economic slowdowns.

Where’s the opportunity though? Microtransactions and free-to-play games. Web and casual games. Companies who take advantage of this market may be better positioned for today’s and tomorrow’s economy.

Silicon Valley isn’t doing great either. It’s also been suspected that Yahoo! is going to layoff a ton of employees, perhaps as many as 3,000. But that’s not concrete and many expect it not to be that drastic. And Sun Microsystems posted a much bigger loss than expected. They are planning layoffs as well.

And the economy is also finally affecting the ridiculous Vancouver condo boom. Many Vancouver condos and housing developments are being stalled, including Concord Pacific’s West Georgia Cosmo, and Onni’s V6A condo development, that still has its sales office open and is selling to unsuspecting buyers. Oh man. Onni is doing some seriously criminal stuff.

That’s it for today!

There’s so much to write about tonight — I feel like I’m playing catch up.

In preparation for my trip, the video game company I work for upgraded my Blackberry Pearl to the Blackberry Bold, since in Japan and Korea the only cell networks there are 3G (my Pearl wouldn’t work there). I’ll likely only get to use the Bold for the duration of my trip, so I’m determined to make the most of it! It’s got a fabulous large screen, backlit full QWERTY keyboard, GPS, and all the applications you could imagine. The camera on it will come in handy for uploading to my Facebook while I’m away. I’m hoping to get some blog posts in as well. The GPS is AWESOME. It can locate me within a couple metres on Google Maps and show me directions to anywhere I want to go. It can also tell what direction I’m going. And for totally non-work purposes, Facebook and Messenger work on it seamlessly. SO SEXY. Sometimes working in the industry has its perks!

I also haven’t had a chance to write about my last work trip to LA. After a presentation and some meetings, I headed out with my good friends (and previous business partners) from university Chris and Erik, who are now doing private equity down in LA. That’s the great thing about school… it always seems like there’s someone you know who is working wherever you visit in the world. We hit up Koi in LA, which was an amazing restaurant, and I spent the next evening shopping on Melrose.

Burton Women’s Supreme Snowboard Boots... so comfy. My boots last year were a half size too small, and I spent my 30 day season snowboarding with my toes curled under

Another pair of Burton long underwear that isn’t cotton and wicks moisture which is SO important in the winter, I couldn’t help myself from getting a SIGG Burton bottle, and of course, I had to get some underwear from Agent Provocateur. The designs on the underwear were SO cool. And the bra was really girly. I buckled under pressure.

Most of the stores were way WAY out of my price range, but I did manage to snag a couple goodies along the way.

Flashback to the present… tonight I spent a little time cooking up a red pepper cream rigatoni for Allan with hot peppers, mushrooms, shallots, and my favourite food, bacon. Okay, maybe a little too much bacon. Then again, can you ever have too much bacon? I’m sure we’ll die from heart disease one day. We always shop twice a week at, once at Granville Island and once at Capers. That way, we’re always getting fresh local organic ingredients. So hey, maybe it’ll offset some of the bacon fat.

Photo Credit: Canucks.com

Also, I can’t end this post without talking a little bit about the Canucks. This is old news, but Luongo’s new mask is fantastic. I love the ‘C’ over the chin piece. Also, I’m really happy with the direction that Mike Gillis is taking the Canucks. I know he’s not everyone’s favourite GM, but he’s obviously had an impact as evidenced in the pre-season. I’m also loving the trade he made for D-man Shane O’Brien and RW Michel Ouellet. Krajicek and Simek go down to the Lightning. And get this — both our new guys are Canadian. I’m loving our increasingly Canadian Canucks team. Keep it up, Gillis!

Photo Credit: Marc Jacobs

And lastly, man, I REALLY want one of these Marc Jacobs hair bands. They’re around $80-120 which is just ridiculous for a plastic hair accessory. But something about them just keeps me coming back. I’ve got my fabulous Marc Jacobs coat for fall, and these cutie hair bands would look perfect with it. The dilemma — I can’t choose between pink or black. Right now I’m leaning towards black. Any help?