Comment by numlocked

At work, we give Cliff’s Klein bottles as the quarterly award for engineering excellence. When I ordered the first batch, I called the number on the Acme Klein bottles website to ask whether they could be engraved (the site states the CLIFF won’t engrave the bottles but I wanted clarification if ANYONE would engrave them). It rang and went to voicemail. I started leaving a message with my question when suddenly there was a lot of noise as the phone was picked up (apparently it was a real answering machine) by someone shouting “don’t hang up! Don’t hang up!”. It was Cliff. I was briefly star-struck, told him what an influence The Cuckoo’s Egg had on me when I was younger, and then received a 15-minute oral history of engraving methods and why none of them would work on his Klein bottles. An absolute highlight of my year, and I think they’ve been well received as engineering awards...even if we have to use a label-maker to add the recipient’s name :)