Someone said:
Speaking of another thing, the Essentials changes to races are included in the October errata, so that means that new characters can use those options. Am I wrong?
The Essentials changes that were a separate document and not part of the normal errata are not included. So, those changes come into effect October 25th. I don't think there were any Essentials changes in the normal October update.
Yeah, this is all kinds of weirdness. We're probably just splitting hairs, since it should be ok in two weeks, but WotC doing something outside of their normal set ways has definitely confused a lot of folks, myself included.
At the moment, it seems like the changes to the races that only involve the new racial stats are probably ok, since those are included in the comprehensive errata released in October. Other than that, it's hard to say. And truthfully: it's not worth nitpicking, either.
I'm sure this will all be much clearer in a month or two, but in the meantime, if you'd like to use something from Essentials I'd suggest just running it through this discussion thread first. It's pretty safe to assume that most published stuff will get approved on schedule, and that by the time the judges have enough time to check your sheet it may be a moot point anyway,

but it's better to check stuff first and we can all hash it out before anyone wastes time updating a sheet and then has to change it. We'd all like to avoid confusion, but it's just a rather confusing time for 4.0 at the moment.