The difference between love and hate ...

... can be as simple as a matter of a few degrees centigrade.

Love
Hate

Of course, the old one is now sticking to its story that hovering at -71C is a "Good Thing".

Lab angst

Since I've been in my lab, I've had a low temp (-80C) freezer which has been nothing but a pain in my tookus. For the past three to four months it has been hovering at around -62C. We finally scratched up enough end-of-year funds to purchase a new one, and after canceling one order (it was confiscated by pirates I believe, because it appears to have been "lost at sea") the new one arrived last month. We have this new puppy fired up and at temperature and I began transferring shelves (one per day) yesterday. Well, I did the bottom shelf yesterday, went home, came back this morning and the old freezer is up to -71C. I don't know whether the threat of termination was enough to get its butt back in gear, or if the thing was just filled past capacity (which doesn't seem like it should happen). Anyone around here a low temp freezer guru who might know what's going on here? I mean, I can use this older freezer for temp storage (though nothing around here is ever temporary for long) and holding a secondary backup stash of clones/strains without using 25% to 50% of the freezer for storage. But talk about inefficient.