Mitchell A59 "G.R.I.D." lab closed for renovation and upgrade August 16, 2013 through September 5, 2013. User files on lab computers will be erased!
Last revision July 17, 2013
The Stanford Earth Sciences "G.R.I.D." computer lab in Mitchell A59 will close on Friday, August 16, 2013, for complete lab renovation and upgrade, and re-open on Friday, September 6, 2013. During this closure, none of the computers, printers, or other devices in the lab will be accessible. Plan ahead if you need to print maps or posters and do it before August 16!
The lab door combination code will be changed on August 16. The new code will be published in the "Quick Links" section of the G.R.I.D. lab website when the lab re-opens.
All existing computers will be replaced, so you may wonder what happens to the files you made on them. For regular Earth Sciences faculty, staff, and grad students (anyone with a home share on the School file server sesfs.stanford.edu), files stored in this lab on the Desktop or the Documents folder are actually automatically redirected to a subfolder on the user's home share, so they are safe and will not be affected by this upgrade.
All other user files stored on the hard disks of the lab computers (not in your Desktop or the Documents folder) will be erased on August 16! If you want to keep such files, you need to copy them somewhere else before August 16. In addition, application preference settings, browser cache files, bookmarks, browser history, etc., are stored locally on each computer and will be erased. You will need to re-do your settings on the new computers.
For years, a large metal map case in the corner of the lab has been available for students to store maps and other large documents they are currently using. This map case will be discarded. If you have any maps or other papers stored in it, take them by August 16 or they will be recycled. By the way, this map case is available for re-use; contact the lab managers.
This long closure is needed to completely strip the 60's era fabric from the walls and brighten up the room with fresh paint. The old workstation tables will be replaced.
All computers in the lab will be replaced. Six powerful new 27 inch Apple iMac computers will be installed. These will be configured to boot either Mac OS X 10.8 or Windows 7, as the user prefers. All currently supported software packages will be installed and updated on the new computers.
The very old poster printer "escher" will be replaced with a new model, but this may not be completed by September 6. The five-year old poster printer "ptolemy" will remain, along with the map scanner and smaller desktop scanners.