Measure Twice, Cut Twice - It's OK, Really

You know that old adage, measure twice, cut once. Well, I'm of the, measure twice, still cut twice, ilk.
I made that mistake on the pocket door jamb. I was trying to get fancy. Our friend and neighbor had remodeled his bathroom and showed me how he had specially cut the jamb so it completely covered the ugly metal hardware. Of course, it didn't quite sink in at the time, but now that I was actually trimming our pocket door, I understood and decided to also add this fine, finishing touch.
Well you can guess what happened.
Long story short, I had to go to the store and buy another door jamb. But of course HD didn't have one in pine, only MDF, and I abhor that stuff (quick backpedaling - that doesn't mean it's not good for other people and other applications!).
So I went over to a local lumberyard. Fortunately, they had what I wanted and for $14, I was back in business. However, what was really fortuitous was they had a flooring display. And in their display was a big 2' x 2' sample of the exact floor I had picked out for our downstairs, the Kahrs San Antonio. I pulled it out to admire and instead was appalled to see how short each individual strip was. Of course, I couldn't have seen it, would never have seen it, based on the 8" x 8" sample I was working off of (which I got off the Internet).
Wow, that $14 cutting error saved us a few thousand dollars worth of heartache!