The I.T. Girl by Fiona Pearse Read Free Book Online Page A

down?’
    ‘Memory. It’s staying high. Performance
is going to keep getting worse.’
    ‘Jesus, Orla , you’ve got to find the
bug right now. Felix is going to kill us both.’
    A new round of irate messages began popping up obscuring the
slow pricing and, overwhelmed with nerves, I began to giggle.
    ‘It’s not funny. What are you laughing at?’ Boris threw his hands
at the screen.
    ‘I’m sorry,’ I choked, watching the flashing messages fighting
each other for space.
    Felix was suddenly behind us making me jump.
    ‘I have traders yelling down the phone threatening to come up
here,’ he said, pointing towards his office. ‘Two feeds are down. What the fuck is going on?’
    ‘I think METX is compromising the server it’s running on,’ I
said, quickly sobering up. ‘I’ll move Tradeq to its backup
server.’
    ‘Do it now,’ Felix said.
    With Felix and Boris standing behind me I restarted Tradeq on its backup, safely out of the way. The three of us
stared at the screen until the Tradeq prices resorted
to normal.
    ‘Why wasn’t this done before?’ Felix demanded.
    ‘I was trying to find the problem. I didn’t think the delays
would get any worse.’ I squirmed, knowing the answer wasn’t good enough.
    ‘I take it METX is a software problem. What about stopping it
and restarting it?’
    I hesitated. ‘On start-up it sends a message to the Exchange
server requesting all its market data from the beginning of day. That would flood
the terminals with duplicates from this morning.’
    ‘Is the start time configurable?’ Boris asked.
    ‘Yes, 8 a.m. is the start-up time.’ I followed his train of thought.
‘If I just change it to 2 p.m. we’ll only get a small amount of duplicates.’
    ‘Okay.’ Boris said. ‘Start it on its backup server, wait until
the duplicates are processed and then switch clients to the backup.’
    ‘Do it now,’ Felix barked.
    When I restarted METX on the backup the delays disappeared. When
I was sure it was processing data correctly I re-directed traders to the backup
providing them with timely data. The three of us watched as updates began to appear
on the screen. I checked the performance.
    Memory 14%
    CPU 12%
    ‘This looks okay.’ Adrenalin began to drain from my body like
blood. ‘I’ll keep an eye on it. I can restart the feed again if delays build up.’
    ‘I don’t want any more delays today,’ Felix said.
    ‘What the hell is going on?’ Boris asked, wiping his forehead
when Felix was gone.
    ‘I think it’s dropping so many packets that it doesn’t have time
to recover before the next packet is dropped,’ I said limply. ‘So the memory builds
until it starts to use up memory that’s meant for other feeds, slowing down everything
around it.’
    ‘Shit me,’ Boris said, wiping his brow again.
    ‘I’ll keep an eye on it, Boris,’ I assured him. ‘At least it’s
isolated now so it can’t affect any other feed.’
    ‘Yeah, well, once the opening activity in the US is over things
might quieten down. Alright, let me know if you need any help.’
    I shook my head at my code. The figures were dancing in front
of my eyes. I turned back to the server stats again and watched the memory usage
rise and fall along with the butterflies in my chest. Why aren’t you fast enough? I thought, feeling queasy. I realized I
needed to eat.
    In the canteen I felt too sick to eat. I made my way to the juice
bar where groups of brittle girls and sales boys posed like fruit flies. I avoided
eye contact in case my realness was a shock to them and filled a paper cup with
orange and mango juice.
    On the way back I stopped in to the Think Tank. The door whispered
closed behind me and suddenly the pace of life was set by the fish traversing the
wall to wall tanks. The only sound was from bubbles rising and the hum of a disillusioned
grad playing with a yo-yo in the corner. Sam was in his usual spot, sitting against
a giant lego block, leaning over a notepad on his knee.
He