Vyki notices another issue

Vyki continued to work with getting people’s information, taking them to the room, and coming back for more. But each time as she would come back she would keep looking back through the line thinking maybe Caroleta had gotten in queue to be polite or come walking down the hall.

Looking up from the couple he was talking to, Eddy could see the pensive look in Vyki’s eyes. With concern, he asked her, “something wrong, hun?”

It took Vyki a moment to realize he was talking to her, “huh? Oh, I was just hoping my friend would show up?”

“The one with the cute little pig tails?” Eddy asked. “She probably just found some cute beau or something.”

“Eddy!” Vyki said stomping her foot, “I’m serious! I don’t think she would have left her stuff here.”

The lady Eddy was working with spoke up, “little pig tails? Was she a cute little blonde in an adorable little pink satin nightie set with marabou heels?”

“Ya!” Vyki said excitedly walking over to her. “Did you see her?”

“We saw her getting in her car as we were coming in,” the guy in the vest with her said.

“Braver girl then I,” the lady in the red leather dress said. “We were worried she was walking somewhere dangerous, but once she got in her car, we figured she was safe enough and let her do her thing.”

“Oh,” Vyki said surprised.

“Guess she figured the coat wasn’t that important,” Eddy commented conceitedly.

Vyki had hoped to maybe connect with her at some other point, but figured she had some other thing to do. Maybe their paths would pass a fourth time. “I guess,” Vyki said somewhat dejectedly as she slinked back behind the table.

Feeling her scheduled vibrations kick in as an timer goes off, Vyki guided the next pair to the photo suite. As she was guiding the previous group out of the room, she noticed several of the other groups still lingering around waiting for photos. Shrugging about it, she sauntered back to the table in a bit of a funk.

However, after taking some more information and the next timer going off, Vyki told Eddy, “there seemed to be something going on the other side; I’m going to check on that before I bring the next session in.”

“Sure,” said Eddy as he was talking to the next group that looked like they had walked in from Sturgis.

Vyki sashayed back over to the room. Looking in the room she saw the couple giving Santa each a kiss on his cheek and waited for the flash to go over indicating the got the shot before she called out, “time,” as she walked in.

Looking around, she saw the photographer work with his camera as Santa waved to the couple before getting his drink. Then looking to the side he could see a very frustrated and angry look on Regina’s face behind her computer setup. This obviously didn’t bode well, but considering her day job, Vyki would see if it was something she could help with.

Swishing her way over to Regina’s setup careful to avoid the web and tangled cables on the floor, Vyki reached Regina. However, Regina seemed to be unphased by her presence as she continued to mumble and gripe as she appeared to be looking from code to status windows, “why are you so fucking slow?!?”

“Something giving you problems?” Vyki tried to ask in her most calming tone, but that didn’t stop Regina from leaping briefly out of her chair not realizing something was standing next to her.

Her concentration broken by yet another interruption, Regina was about to lay into the person until she saw the fluffy-white hem at her eye-line with a peek of a black spandex surely covering a garden. However, her mindset quickly went from code troubleshooting to absolute awe of the sweet tower of red beside her. Looking at that sweet smile, she didn’t know how there could be something wrong with the world.

Realizing the girl didn’t seem to hear what she said, Vyki repeated herself, “having some sort of problem, deary?”

Regina finally realized the sweet motherly figure asked her if she was having problems and tried to form a summary of the issue, “uh... umm... videos going slow,” she answered and could kick herself for sounding so idiotic.

“Oh, wow,” Vyki said and genuinely offered, “mind if I take a look and see if I can help?”

Regina got a smirk on her face thinking that this matron would bother messing with computers, but didn’t see any harm in her touching them if she watched, so she said “sure,” with a big silly grin rolling her chair out of the way.

Vyki immediately stepped up to the laptop and bent over rather unnaturally from her corset with her bottom sticking out as she clicked through to see the status. She didn’t have time to do a code review, so looked at the apps and could see the sluggishness just from window transitions.

Pulling up the computer stats and counters, she could see the machine had plenty of compute and memory, but something was **** out all the RAM. Looking at the usage she could see a red flag. “It looks like you have over two dozen processes active with no CPU usage but together, they’re taking up 80% of your memory and everything else is paging in and out.”

Regina wasn’t sure which she was more surprised by: the fact the beauty seemed to have a coherent tech statement or the fact that sliding over next to her she could clearly see she had missed the rather obvious issue.

“Looks like some of these have been running for hours as well,” Vyki pointed out. “Are they actually waiting for a trigger to do the next step or are these dead threads?” Vyki asked the girl still staring slack-jawed at the screen.

A little frustrated with the girl, Vyki spoke up, “Gina, can I kill these processes or are they still needed?”

Regina could hear her unwanted diminutive name, but could tell it was a valid question and demurely replied, “uhm, yes, Mistress... they’re done you can kill them.”

“Great!” Vyki says before correcting, “but I’m not your ‘misstress’,” as she proceeded to kill them all, triggering a slew of dialogue processes indicating completed tasks. “Well, looks like we found a culprit.” Standing back up to give Gina access to the keyboard, “can we validate they actually did work and not just false positives?”

“Oh, uh, yes, Mistr-er-Miss Vyki, I can check the USB drives,” Regina said as she slid over to the keyboard. “I setup two routines to update the images; after it drops the source on the drive, it does a simple AI to identify contents of the picture and tag them, and then another one makes a copy with identifying parts like faces, ears, tattoo’s, etc. If they want to post risque photos more safely.” Spot checking several of the drives, “looks like they all did fine.”

Vyki had leaned down over Gina’s shoulder to watch her, “wonderful! That’s brilliant, Gina!” Vyki congratulates her a simple solution to solving the problem.

Regina was thrilled by the complement and turned to make a wise crack about how easy it was but nearly bumped into Vyki’s cleavage and her eyes went wide as she was locked on her bountiful cleavage in front of her view.

“Hey, instead of bugging with coding and compiling on a production system to find the missing Exit or debug line that didn’t get commented out,” Vyki said sliding over the keyboard in front of herself as she continued leaning over, “let me just type up this quick script,” as her manicured nails started clicking away.

Regina was still in awe of watching this elegant lady hack her way on her computer even if it was basic stuff, it was just pure beauty to watch her go. However, she knew she shouldn’t expect her to fix it, “oh, uh, that’s fine, Miss Vyki, I can...”

“And there,” Vyki said, “K, Gina, that should just run in a simple loop once a minute to see if there are any long running instances of that process that are idle and just kill them so shouldn’t have to worry about it,” Vyki continued as she stood up.

The poor girl seemed to keep staring from her to the script occasionally. “I wouldn’t rely on that script long term since I just tossed it on there, but that should hold you through today so you can finish debugging the code later. If for some reason, the script dies, I put an icon on the desktop to kick it off again.”

Looking at the script, Regina could tell it wasn’t astrophysics, but the fact she could type it off the top of her head indicated this was child’s play to her.

“We should probably make sure everything is working as expected,” Vyki said, “do you have a test drive we could use?”

“Yes, Miss Vyki,” Regina said dropping into the name she saw her cute boi use earlier, grabbing a blank drive, and adding it to the hub. “I’ll set up the process to run through one.”

“Imran,” they said simultaneously before they giggled realizing they had the same idea as they broke up his conversation with Santa. With his confused look at the two of them, Vyki took the lead, “could you take a couple of quick pictures; we need to validate the workflow is still working.”

“Uh, sure,” Imran said walking over and hitting the shutter button a few times. As the images popped up on Regina’s screen, “And here we go,” Regina said hitting the ‘Process’ button. A flurry of a window went by in about 30 seconds. She then pulled up the machine’s status and clearly it ran through and left a process there. However, within 30 seconds, the process entry magically disappeared and the ‘Complete’ dialogue popped up.

“Perfect!” shouted Vyki; happy to see her impromptu script worked on the first run.

Just then, Miss H burst through the door, “what’s going on in here?!?” Looking around frustrated at her team seemingly standing around including her hostess who should be out front bringing in the next group. “Where are my drives and why the hell are you in here, Vyki?”

“I noticed the gathering group at the end, and figured something might be up and peaked my head in here to ask what was up,” Vyki explained nervously rambling, “Gina mentioned the slow process so I helped her out and we got it working right.”

“You mean REgina...” Heather said defiantly correcting Vyki knowing the girl hated the short name and was too timid to do it herself but was shocked when Regina spoke up.

“NO,” Regina said a bit louder than she meant when interrupting Miss H before clarifying, “no, Miss H, its fine if Miss Vyki wants to call me that,” Regina said with a bit of a giggle looking up, admiring the tall lady smiling down at here as butterflies fluttered in her stomach.

“Right,” Heather said wondering what exactly she missed and was about to say more, when Regina spoke up again.

“And all these drives are ready now,” Regina said gather a handful of drives and held them out for Miss H to grab.

Thrilled to see the backlog cleared, “so these are all ready now?” Heather asked as the two distinctly different girls giddily nodded at her. “So we can run at pass without getting behind?”

“Absolutely,” Regina said with an uncharacteristically cheerful tone. Even Vyki found the girl’s enthusiasm contagious as she giggled a bit more while attached toy discharged its power on schedule.

“Good,” Heather said, “in that case, Vyki, when you get back out there, change the default time for anyone new to 1 minute and cap them at 6 minutes; we have a long line to get through.”

“Yes, Miss H,” Vyki giggled in reply still running a bit of a post-coding high.

“If Eddy is still helping, let him know, but don’t change anyone that you’ve already talked to,” Heather said as she turned to leave, “alright, crew, let’s hop to it! We got a charity to help!”

“Yes, ma’am” three of them said in unison while Santa took a drink.

“Thank you again, Miss Vyki,” Regina blurted out as the elegant lady walked flawlessly over the cables on the floor.

“Happy to, Gina!” Vyki replied. “Let me know if you have any issues with debugging it later if you want; I can always be a good rubber ducky if need,” Vyki joked as she stepped through the door.

Regina spent several seconds wistfully staring at the door with a rapid evolving daydream of North Pole retreat when it was interrupted with Bill calling out, “Earth to Gina? You ready?”

Her tone turning very sullen again she whips her head around and glares at Bill, “it’s REgina, ass hole! I’m ready just worry about your fat ass.”

“My ass is not fat!” Bill said defiantly as he fiddled with the back of his coat to make sure it was dropping appropriately behind him just as the next couple came in.

Quickly turning her head to the door, Regina caught a glimpse at Miss Vyki and put her hand up to wave at her and nearly slid out of her seat she waved her fingers at her before the door sealed shut.

Getting the next session going, Vyki returned to the table and pulled Eddy to the side to whisper in his ear. “Don’t worry about the ones we’ve filled out already, but Miss H said to change to default session to 1 minute and the max to 6; we have a growing line and shrinking time.”

Eddy looked at her questioningly, “are you sure? Why didn’t she tell us??”

Vyki looked at him with bewilderment, “she told me, and said to tell you.”

Eddy wasn’t sure if she was real.

Exasperated, Vyki pointed out, “ask her yourself if you don’t believe me; I’m just playing the messenger,” as she turned back to the next person in line with a smile plastered on her face.

“Fine!” Eddy said, “I will,” garnering an eye-roll from Vyki behind his back. Keying up his radio he said, “LadyH this E1, inquiry please. Over.”

A few seconds later an exasperated Heather could be heard over the speaker, “Eddy just ask it.”

There was an uncomfortable pause as Eddy waited for confirmation for her to finish her transmission, but frustratingly knew it wouldn’t happen. “LadyH, E1 here, confirming parameter change to 60 down from 120, and 360 down from 600. Over”

The speaker squelched a moment as feedback seemed to come through for a moment. Several seconds later, a very curt Heather could be heard, “yes, Eddy, that is what I said.”

Eddy could hear the frustration over the radio, “Roger LadyH, transmission received, Over and out.”

“Happy now,” Vyki asked with a sickly sweet grin.

Eddy just huffed as he went back to organizing the timers and looked up at the line that was becoming a large group. “One line everybody,” he barked out as he walked out from behind the table. “Gotta keep a fire-lane, everyone one side,” could be heard as the large oaf traveled down the hall.