For those of you who missed it, I dressed up as Nick Oddson for Halloween this year.  This was a repeat performance for people who were with Open Text six years ago and were located in the Albert Street office.  For those of us who knew Nick six years ago versus “SVP Nick” you’ll understand that the performances were necessarily very different and more subdued.

After making the decision, I started an immediate facial-hair-growing regime.  As the days went by, my appearance became increasingly scruffy and my inability to grow any decent facial hair was becoming obvious.  I received a few odd looks, but for the most part people were kind enough not to comment.  On the Wednesday before Halloween, I had an executive customer visit from Celgene and was looking a bit like a hobo.  I explained to them that I was working on a Halloween costume and to please not remember me as “the guy with a really bad goatee”.  James McGourlay was kind enough to comment from the peanut gallery “and he’s been working on that since June”.  Nice.

By Thursday night, I was ready to begin the transformation.  My beard had grown in almost completely black, so I needed to dye it a lighter colour.  I pulled out the Just for Men Bearch and Sideburn kit and read the instructions.  “Only targets your grey hair” seemed like a deal-killer, but my wife came to the rescue and suggested facial hair bleaching cream.  I applied it and left it on for about 30 minutes, most likely getting high on the ammonia fumes.  The end result was a beard that was Nick-coloured but thin.

I also tested out the rest of the costume, including a haircut on the wig to get it to Nick-length, creating the exclamation point hat out of yellow electrical tape, and testing of a few different types of glasses.  The final task of the night would be to prepare my profile photos to be posted the next morning on Facebook, Twitter, Yammer, and IM so that I could assume the identity of Mr. Oddson.

A note on the facebook photo.  Those of you who don’t follow Nick on facebook will no doubt have been scratching your head when you saw my new facebook profile photo.  For the last month or so, Nick had a picture of himself posing with an oversized jar of honey, and then an oversize jar of mustard.  Mustard being the most readily available club-sized condiment at the grocery store, I chose to lampoon that photo.

I woke up early in the morning and set the plan into motion.  I began a twitter status stream documenting my metamorphosis, and increasingly odd Nick-like behaviours.  I updated the photos, and as people awoke and started reading their social network traffic, my plan was becoming obvious.  I drove into the office, and conveniently ended up pulling into the parking lot at the same time as Nick.  Oh joy of joys, he was wearing almost the exact same outfit!  We both entered the building together and joined Kirk in his office for our first meeting of the day (Kirk got a pretty good laugh out of it).

As the day progressed, I played the part by encroaching on people’s personal space while talking to them and constantly typing on my blackberry.  Sadly, I didn’t take away any “best costume” prizes at the lunch event in the cafeteria but I blame that on doing a poor job of selling it.  I returned home early in time to get the kids ready for trick or treating in the neighbourhood, and the first thing I did when I got home was shave off the beard.