Moving the projector closer is what fixed the size, but it probably wasn't what fixed the crooked part. Keystone is really just a digital band aid, it squishes the image and softens it up. What actually gets rid of the tilt is making sure the lens is square to the wall, no side to side angle and no up or down tilt. If you can, turn keystone off and just aim the thing straight, then use zoom for size. Three nights is nothing, plenty of us have been there.

Clients write specs based on what they think they need, not what's actually going on in the office. The Gary thing sounds real, but is it really that serious? You lost a job over it and walked away with nothing. Sometimes you just do the upgrade they paid for and mention the video streaming thing as a side note so it's on record.

Did the comment happen to be about how the seam lines up with the grain or something? Because I had a similar thing years back where a guy just says "you're fighting the material" and walks off. Took me a minute but he was right. Once I started working with the direction things wanted to go instead of forcing it, my cuts got cleaner and I stopped wasting so much. What was the actual comment?