G.R.I.D. Lab Usage Policies
Last revision November 28, 2011
Availability
The G.R.I.D. lab is available only for students, faculty, and staff affiliated with the School of Earth Sciences. People from other departments are not allowed to use this lab, unless they are sponsored as guests by a faculty member or lab manager in the School of Earth Sciences. That faculty member or lab manager must send the authorization request via email to grid @ sesmail.stanford.edu.
The room is always available and cannot be scheduled for private classes or sessions.
Printer Billing
The charge for printing on the wide-format printers ptolemy and escher is $1 per square foot of paper used. Charges to your account are billed monthly. Printing is free on the small grid-inkjet printer.
The G.R.I.D. printers are strictly self-service. The facility is not a print center and problems or unexpected results are often encountered. Strictly following the tested instructions for making posters will minimize problems. The nominal print fee only offsets the costs of paper and ink and does not pay for equipment or management. You are responsible for all prints released and paper used.
If there are problems with a print, such as the paper ran out, the size was wrong, or you cancelled the job midway, email the G.R.I.D. lab manager explaining the problem, the time and day of the print, the computer used, and how much paper actually came out. The lab manager will adjust the information recorded in the printer usage database so that you are not charged if the printer failed, or are only charged for the actual paper used if you made a formatting error.
Data storage
Authorized users of the lab generally have an account on the School of Earth Sciences file server, sesfs.stanford.edu. The G.R.I.D. lab computers will attempt to automatically connect to your home share on that server and map your "Desktop" and "Documents" folders into the GRIDLab folder on your home share. That is the recommended place to store your documents since they are protected by backups, available from any computer in the lab or your own computer, and are not deleted until you leave Stanford.
Users can also store data files on the local "scratch" disk partition of the computers for reasonable lengths of time. These disks will be erased at least once per year, generally in the fall, to make room for new projects.
If you store data on a computer, please make sure it is in a folder labeled with your SUnet ID. This will allow us to contact you if something needs to be done to the computer.
