Horizon Road

I have never been a William Shatner fan. I enjoyed the original Star Treks a time or two, but I was not a trekkie and seeing an episode more than once in a five year period was probably once too many.

Then there was the drunken night that his wife died in the pool. He was found not to have anything to do with it, but I always had my suspicions…unwarranted, of course, I just didn’t like the man very much. I had a bias for reasons that I could not readily explain, but I felt the way I felt and could not deny it.

Recently I moved from Minnesota to Florida. I’m not a much of a TV watcher to begin with. I watch some sports…well, football…the NFL, to be precise. But football is only on Sundays…and Monday nights…and sometimes Thursdays, and only then when in season. At any rate, in Minnesota, I had access to HBO. I didn’t actually watch it much, but I often used the TV for background noise while working. When there wasn’t a football game on, one of the multitude of HBO channels was usually where it landed. There are no obnoxious commercials on the movie channels, therefore no sudden surges of volume, as is always the case when the network or cable shows take a break to earn some money.

Then came the move. I suddenly found myself in a new state, a new town, a new home, no friends, and nothing to do but work. Though I’m not complaining. I enjoy my work. But I hadn’t yet found a radio station in town that I liked and being busier than ever, I still needed some background noise while I worked. I also hadn’t subscribed to any of the movie stations. Since I don’t actually watch them, they’re just background noise after all, I couldn’t justify the extra expense as I tried to get myself re-established.

So network/cable television, on low volume so the commercial breaks wouldn’t jolt me from my concentration, was going to have to do. And that was when I saw my first episode of Boston Legal.

As I pointed out before, I am not a William Shatner fan. But I do like Candice Bergan. I like James Spader, too. So I didn’t change the channel just to spite William Shatner. Thought about it, but decided it didn’t matter. I wasn’t watching anyway.

I realize I am late with this and watching reruns, but somehow Boston Legal took my concentration away and I found myself actually paying attention to it. On a personal note, I haven’t had much reason for laughter in quite some time, longer than I can remember, if truth be told. But Boston Legal is on several nights a week here (Denny Crane) and I found myself looking for it in the on-screen guide and planning my evening’s around (Denny Crane) it and laughing at William Shatner’s character despite my initial unwillingness to do so (Denny Crane).

I love this show! I love the subtle humor in it. And I love William Shatner as (Denny Crane). I can’t imagine anyone else doing that role as well. He and Spader make a great, quirky, slightly insane team of brilliant lawyers that do nothing by the book.

I felt I needed to write this out as a sort of apology to William Shatner for not liking him for all these years for reasons that I could not define.

And with that said, I leave you with these two words that have brought at least a little laughter back into my world…

Denny Crane.

I have Vista and I LOVE it!

Odd Hours is the fourth installment already of the Odd Thomas series started in 2003 and it sets itself up for a fifth offering that will be coming before too long, I am sure.

The entire story takes place during one evening, a span of about six hours. Odd Thomas finds himself in a town for reasons unknown to him, finds a mysterious pregnant woman whom he doesn’t know, and vows to protect her with his life for reasons she will not reveal. This chapter in Odd’s odd life begins with him meeting the unknown woman who has no last name, and ends with him driving out of town with the woman while still having no idea who she is, why she needs protection, and with no real destination in mind.

Enter book five.

The mysterious woman character is not even necessary in this story, makes a couple of guest appearances to make sure we don’t forget about her, and leaves the reader with a strong feeling of an unfinished story despite the fact that Odd manages to discover and thwart an evil attempt by powers unnamed to redesign the world order beginning with the destruction of several major cities in the United States, all in a six hour time frame.

This story raises more questions than it offers answers. Koontz’s descriptions of the flowers and trees and weather and such take up at least half the book. The other half is Odd using his unusual psychic abilities to track down and shoot the bad guys dead. But even with the villains all having fresh bullet holes in them, the mysterious pregnant woman still requests his safeguarding.

Having helped Elvis find his way to the ever after in the end of the third installment, he relies on the spirits of Frank Sinatra and (of course) a ghost dog named Boo to help him out of a few jams. But even though Odd manages to kill all the pawns in the evil scheme, we are allowed one slip of the tongue that mentions a Senator might be behind, or at least involved, in the plan to start a New Civil Order, yet no conspiracies or politicians, from our country or any other, including the origin of the ship delivering the nukes to the fumbling pawns of the plot, are otherwise ever even mentioned.

This book falls to third in my favor of the four Odd novels. The first one was one of my favorite Koontz novels when I read it. But later, in fact just a few weeks ago, my son and I were watching a movie, one that Dean had watched many times, we decided, The Mothman Prophecies with Richard Gere. I had told my son about Odd Thomas as we often discuss the books we read with each other, but he had not actually read any of the Odd Thomas novels himself. But at the same moment during The Mothman Prophecies, after a single particular line spoken by the expert that Richard Gere had sought out for some supernatural answers, my son and I looked at each other at said “Odd Thomas” almost simultaneously. Sure enough, a quick double checking of dates showed the Mothman appearing in 2002 and Odd Thomas appearing in 2003.

Just like the idea for The Good Guy comes directly from the movie Red Rock West with Nicolas Cage, Odd Thomas is a direct result of The Mothman Prophecies.

It makes me wonder how many other novels of Koontz’s are taken directly from movies that I haven’t happened to see. I hope Life Expectancy isn’t another rip-off being my current favorite Koontz novel.

That being said, despite the fact that Dean appears to be much less imaginative than he would like for everyone to believe when he talks about where he gets his ideas (which he does very often in his newsletters, all of which I read, and none of which mention the movies he is stealing his ideas from); and despite the fact that even with Trixie gone he can’t seem to write a story that doesn’t contain a hero dog or two, Dean Koontz is a very talented, descriptive writer and I enjoy his work because he makes it easy to visualize his story as he tells it.

His books are fast reads with large font and usually fairly fast paced. I read Odd Hours in just two evenings, enjoyed it, but was definitely left unfulfilled with the open-ended finish and all the questions about who this mysterious pregnant woman with no last name is and why she was even in the story to begin with.

Rarely are movie sequels as good as the originals and Odd Thomas falls into this category as well. I thoroughly enjoyed Odd Thomas in 2003 (although now hold a lot less respect for it since discovering, without question, where Koontz lifted the idea from); Forever Odd in 2005 felt like a waste of time; Brother Odd in 2006 was much better than the second in the series with a much more substantial story to tell, but still mostly just the same old stuff in new surroundings; and this latest effort falls somewhere between the second and third chapters of Odd’s odd life.

I suppose when you write as much as Koontz does, you need to dip your fingers into the wells of others to keep the stories coming.

If it sounds like I am being a little hard on the compulsive writer, it’s because I have always considered him one of my favorites. But as I have discovered a few of the sources for his stories, it feels a bit like seeing how the magician does a trick that you have always loved and discovering it was a lot simpler and less complex than you had ever thought it could be, or like going back to the circus for the first time as an adult and seeing the sadness and desperation behind the masks of the clowns that you hadn’t noticed as a child.

All in all, I give Odd Hours a 3 on the 5 star scale and will buy the fifth chapter when it comes out next year sometime, if for no other reason than to find out who this mysterious pregnant woman is that Odd has vowed to protect, and why she needs protecting. Koontz is a talented author and I do enjoy his writing, but I think he has been knocked down on the “favorite” list a few notches because he is much less original than I had previously thought. If you like Dean Koontz, I recommend Odd Hours to spend an evening or two with to pass the time, assuming you have been following the story from the beginning. But if you haven’t been following Odd Thomas since 2003, you aren’t missing much bypassing this long chapter.

Due to an incredible increase in spam attempts to litter my blog with trash, and since I am too busy to be deleting them every ten minutes, I have temporarily, indefinitely suspended the ability for outsiders to leave comments. Once again, the abuse of a few ruin the use for many. Just another example of the far too many thoughtless people out there that don’t care about or have any respect other people’s hard work.

I am not at all into politics. In fact, I generally dislike politics and politicians alike and try to stay away from making any political postings in my blog because of this fact. But I needed to post the fact that I am supporting Obama and he will get my vote for the presidency because of a couple of earlier, less informed short posts I had written (despite my personal political writing policy) and then removed after discovering my errors in them.

And I will say no more about politics. I still hate our entire political system and the criminals that use it to serve themselves more than they serve the people that elect them, but I have been convinced that Obama is different, and for that reason alone, he gets my vote because someone completely different from anyone we’ve had in charge in our lifetime is the only way this country has a chance, and even then, only a slim chance. If we get another Bush or Clinton or Ford or Reagan, (or McCain) or anyone who has been part of the political system for the last two or three decades, the countdown to self-destruction continues.

At least with Obama, I see a slim chance to change directions. And for that slim chance, he gets my vote.

The true fact is, this entire world is becoming Hell because there are just too many people anymore. Obama has a chance for change, a slim chance, but I don’t actually believe the world will allow him to make the changes necessary. The only thing that is going to allow our (human) race to survive into the next century will be a natural disaster (I would never hope for an unnatural disaster) that wipes out at least three quarters of the world population and allows those that are left to start over and try to get it right the second (or third or fourth, do we really, truly know?) time around.

Otherwise, in a few more centuries, survivors will wonder about the existence of a country in the middle of the ocean that was supposedly once called “The United States of America” much the same way we wonder about Atlantis. I hear they tried to conquer the world…and look what it got them.

The world of today seems to be heading for the same fate as Atlantis. But why should any politicians care about that? They’ll be long dead by then.

NextDoor WebStore has reached status!

Actually, I’m still not real sure what the requirements are to achieve PowerSeller status, but eBay said they had been met and slapped the powerful little icon next to my name on their site. There’s a long list of supposed benefits that come with the icon, but the biggest advantage is that given the choice, buyers will buy from a seller sporting the icon before buying from one that is not. And often times, they will even willingly pay a little more because of the icon.

They do claim that a certain level of sales must be maintained in order to keep the icon next to your name, and again, I do not know what these requirements are, but at least for now, I am in the club.

The NFL released its 2008 regular season schedule for the league on Tuesday and the Minnesota Vikings, with a good start out of the gate, should be able to coast into the NFC Central Division Championship this season despite their so-called tough schedule. With the 2007 Rookie of the Year, Future Hall of Famer, Adrian “All-Day” Peterson being handed the starting job from the get-go this year; with the addition of the Chicago Bear’s best wide-out from last year, Bernard Berrian; and with Tarvaris Jackson now stepping into his second year after getting his feet wet and hopefully learning from his mistakes last year (Coach Brad Childress is basically staking his NFL coaching career on the fact that he does); and not forgetting about one of the league’s highest scoring defenses returning with a couple of adjustments towards improvement, the Vikings are a sure-in for the Division Title and at least two games deep into the play-offs by the end of their 2008-09 campaign.

According to NFL.com, the Vikings were handed the fifth toughest schedule in the league for the 2008 season, based on the 2007 winning percentage of each team’s 2008 opponents. But those figures, I believe, are a little off. I mean, they play the Green Bay Packers twice since they are in the same division. The Packers represent 30 wins and 2 losses during the 2007 season. But unless Aaron Rodgers has a season ending injury during the pre-season, I think the Vikings have finally seen the last of their #1 nemesis, Bret Favre. Rodgers will be paying his dues this season and the Green Bay Packers will be lucky to get 4 wins for the year, none of which will be against the Vikings. The Vikings and Packers kick off the 2008 Monday Night Football ritual, but without Favre at the helm, it just won’t be the same. Vikings should win that game easily and provide a healthy boost to Tarvaris Jackson’s confidence that he will need to carry with him into the following week.

Week 2 will be the real test for the Vikings. They don’t have to win (assuming they beat they Packers in Week 1 on Monday Night) but they need to show themselves, as well as the media and fans, that they can give Peyton Manning and the Indianapolis Colts a run for their money. The Colts will be hanging around in the end of the season looking for another shot at New England when the time comes. Some things just don’t change that often.

This is probably the tell-all portion of the season for the Vikings, Week 2 through week 5; Indianapolis, Carolina, Tennessee, and New Orleans, respectively. As I said, they don’t necessarily need to beat Indianapolis in Week 2, but if they don’t, they’d better be prepared to win at least two out of the next three. While Carolina is trying to rediscover their identity, Tennessee and New Orleans each know exactly who they are and also have their sights on a quick start and a slip-slide into the play-offs. But as eluded to in the opening paragraph, I think Peterson and Berrian will provide enough of a threat to widen the field enough for Jackson to relax and get his job done even while still learning to get better at it. The Vikings should be 4-1 by the end of Week 5, but they will be able to live with 3-2.

Following that stretch are five games in a row that the Viking SHOULD win. 8-2 after 10 weeks SHOULD be enough for them to coast into the play-offs (where they might win one to get their hopes up, but they won’t win two). Detroit, Chicago, Houston, Green Bay again, and Tampa Bay.

Detroit is Detroit. Home, away, here, there, doesn’t really matter because the Motor City Kitties are never quite sure where they are. Chalk up two wins for being in the Central Division.

Green Bay is not Green Bay. No one knows who they are anymore with Favre gone. This year should provide a sign or two of the answer, but not much more than that can be expected even from the 60,000 owners that show up at the office each Sunday afternoon to watch their investment at play. Two more wins donated to the cause.

Houston is finally getting better and proving that it can play in our league, but they still have another year or two to go before they will actually worry anyone. They’ve proven they can play, but now they have to prove they can stay healthy. The Vikings meet them mid-season, when most of their players are usually still trying to recover from the season’s first few games.

Tampa Bay. At Tampa Bay. If the Vikings won the last four in a row, they may lose this one because they’ll probably be starting to think that they are better than they really are and Tampa Bay will bring them back to reality.

So 8-2, 7-3, at this point. Jacksonville will be a tough game. They are a tough team and Del Rio is a tough coach with Minnesota ties. I give this game to Jacksonville with Maurice Jones-Drew out-shining Peterson (only time it happens this season to Peterson).

And then the Viking slide into home plate with the flailing Bears and Detroit again, and Arizona and Atlanta, two teams that do not know how to win in December, and the final game of the year against the NFL reigning champions (cough, cough) the New York Frickin’ Giants (I still haven’t recovered from that shocker yet). The Giants are not the best team in the NFL, were not the best team in NFL last year, and will not beat the Vikings this year. I’m not quite sure how Eli Manning and his oft injured and banged up crew pulled off what they pulled off last year (I had almost forgotten they were even in the play-offs until I saw who New England was going to have to destroy!) but they won’t even make the play-offs this year.

Final regular season record for the Minnesota Vikings…12-4.

But don’t let that fool you. The Vikings aren’t that good yet. The rest of the Central Division is simply that bad. But Adrian Peterson will certainly be fun to watch each and every week this season, and if Tarvaris Jackson allows Childress to remain head coach for a few more years, they could very well become that good over the next two or three seasons.

Okay, sometimes I feel too stupid to live, but luckily I have a good brother watching my back.

As you may or may not know, whoever you may be, I have recently opened up an eBay storefront, NextDoor WebStore. As the hundreds of thousands before me have also done, I went into the business with high hopes thinking all I had to do was work real hard at it and I couldn’t help but succeed. With millions of people visiting eBay every single day, all I would have to do is find a few things that sell and then sell the shit out of them. Even if all I make is a buck or two per sale, you can’t go wrong if you work hard enough to put out a couple hundred auctions a day and half or even a third of them produce sales. The numbers very quickly add up to no more delivering newspapers.

Well it’s only been a month now, but I can already see that it just doesn’t work that way. After hundreds of hours of searching for the right drop shipping wholesaler, and even finding a couple that are actually legitimate, I find myself in the same boat as the other hundreds of thousands that put pen to paper and produced the same optimistic figures that I did; unable to move my products because there’s a hundred thousand others out there trying to move the same stuff from the same drop shippers. It comes down to who’s willing to take a loss.

I sold a briefcase and after eBay listing fees and sales fees, and after PayPal took their cut and the wholesaler added $2.00 for processing and shipping for me, I made a grand total of 25 cents. So I raised my price by a dollar and the next order I made $1.25. Okay, so now if I can figure out how to sell 10 of those a day and find 10 more products I can sell 10 a day of, presto, I’m making $100 per day.

Well, not only had I only sold 8 briefcases after the first three weeks, the last one went to some remote town in northern Maine and cost $3.00 more to ship. I lost a couple bucks on that sale. So to try to cover myself from that happening again, I raised the price two more dollars. Of course by now, there are plenty of others selling the same briefcase for the amount that I had run from and I haven’t sold another since.

So, maybe buying a little in bulk, getting combined shipping on said bulk, would translate into lower selling prices and enable me to sell for less, shipping myself for less than those doing the drop shipping, as well.

Again, on paper, it looks great. Reality is another story altogether.

So now I have about 8 different kinds of chess boards (several of each), and several exotic looking dragon thingies (several of each), and (a bunch of) super cool Reapers vs Skeletons Tic-Tac-Toe games. Like I said, sometimes I am so stupid I even amaze myself.

Yes, you guessed it, haven’t sold a one.

So, what am I doing wrong? That was the million dollar question. I see there are indeed people on eBay selling 50-100 items a day, they’re called PowerSellers. All I wanted to do was figure out how to become a PowerSeller.

Now please don’t misunderstand my motivation here. Many, if not most, go into this venture thinking they’ll only have to work a couple hours a day and eBay will do all the work and they will just sit back and reap the rewards. 100% of those folks fail.

I went into this KNOWING I would have to work very hard, PLANNING on working very hard, and so far I have been putting in about 15 hours a day for the past month trying to figure out how to get this to work, how to become a PowerSeller. But, so far, I’m still clueless.

I have generated over $1100 in sales over the past month, however, mostly from books and DVDs and CDs from my own collection. Now if that had been ALL I had been selling, I’d probably have most of that money in my pocket, but of course, I’m trying to build a business. I have bought bulk shipping supplies, a scale to weigh shipments for postage, a digital camera for images in my listings, business cards, and let’s not forget $1300 of inventory hanging around in my basement. I’ve listed close to 100 auctions for drop shipping products and have sold the 8 briefcases and one Global GPS unit (made $21.00 on that sale, but one a month ain’t gonna bring home the bacon). So eBay is making a killing on thousands of us wannabes trying to figure out the secret to being a PowerSeller and ultimately giving up but only after listing a couple hundred dollars worth of crap that won’t sell because everyone and their mother is already trying to sell the same damn thing from the same damn place!

But still, I log in to eBay every single day and see them sitting there, laughing at me, shaking their heads in dismay, those PowerSellers that are raking in all the sales, even selling stuff that I can’t, like they belong to some secret exclusive club of know-how. They know and I don’t and like the magician on stage, they aren’t giving away any secrets.

So, along comes Simplx.com. (You were beginning to wonder if I had titled this article wrong, weren’t you.) Simplx.com, the answer to your dreams, the inspiration of hope, the holder of the secret of the PowerSeller. For only $700, you can get yourself a coach that will advise you on what to sell, how to sell it, how to design your store, where to find the products to sell, and basically hold your hand until they make you a PowerSeller! Exactly what I had been looking for. Exactly what I needed to get my business off and running. They claim, and my numbers backed it up, that I would make that $700 back the first month and if I don’t, they have failed me and would return the investment.

Where do I sign?!

I signed, I paid, I planned, I was on my way.

Thank God I mentioned all this to my brother that same day. Within minutes he had emailed me numerous links to stories and articles about this company (and others run by the same criminal) where people had been left high and dry. One hour of coaching and then a good luck pat on the back was what most had received. There were a few successes out there, but no where near enough for any sane person to get involved with them. And for all I know, those few could have been planted by Mr. Joshua Lee himself!

Like I said, sometimes I think I am just too stupid to live.

So, heeding my wise brother’s advice, I stopped payment on the check I had mailed them, a convenience check from my credit card. Then suddenly remembering that I had also given them my credit card number for a monthly membership fee to the largest selection of name brand drop ship goods in the world that would start after my coaching was complete, I decided I had better not take any chances and I canceled the card altogether and requested a new one, leaving no room for doubt.

Okay, saved by the brother. Thanks, Tim. I owe you plenty. But here’s the funny part and the final proof that my wise (younger!) brother was quite on the mark. Simplx.com didn’t know that I had stopped payment on the check. Today they gave me a call to set up the coaching. Here’s exactly how that conversation went…

Simplx Guy: David! How are you?! Are you ready to set up your coaching and start your new career?

Me: You know, I told my brother about this and he sent me about 50 links…

The phone went dead.

Like I said, I owe you, Tim.

I’m still working at my store. And I even still think I can make it a success, though I may never become a PowerSeller. But it’s not going to happen with drop shipping and I’m done looking for any coaches or paid professional advice. I’m not buying anymore memberships to any wholesaler’s warehouse and I’m not buying anymore bulk goods to sell. I do have a business card and I believe a consignment storefront in eBay will do much better than trying to drop ship everything with thousands of others trying to move the same product.

I’m also not going to limit myself to eBay, especially where this excess inventory I have laying around is concerned. Today I put ads up on craigslist.com and oodles.com for some of my inventory items. And guess what, the ads were free. I’ve already gotten one email, a couple hours after posting the listing, for a pair of dragon-head book ends (they haven’t bought a set yet, but that one question about my product was more than I had gotten on eBay for the same product after a week). They really are nice. I bought a pair for myself, too. On eBay, there are several others selling them for the pretty much the same price I am. On criagslist, no one else is selling them.

So this is what I am going to try to do, expand my playground. Sure, I will continue selling on eBay because you can’t find a bigger audience anywhere in the world. But I am also going to try to find other places to sell.

And I am keeping my paper routes. They pay the bills. Maybe my store will be a good supplemental income sometime down the road. I will continue to work hard at it, but with a new goal in mind. It may not become the full-time business I was hoping for, but it could even be a little fun (which is how it started a month ago…but it really hasn’t been very fun lately) assuming I don’t fall for anymore ruthless traps laid out by assholes like Joshua Lee who feed off the hopes and dreams of people like me who are still trying to figure things out.

Thanks again, Tim. You’re a good brother.

So I’m sitting there watching North Carolina, or at least I thought it was North Carolina, getting trounced by Kansas in the Final Four match up last night, and decided a pizza might at least make the bad game I couldn’t not watch a little better.

Since I hate using my modern new-fangled mobile phone that does so many different things it makes it hard to do the one thing it was made for, talking to people, I decided to order my pizza online. I won’t have to adjust any volume, assuming I can find the volume adjuster when on the phone in time for it to matter; I wouldn’t have to ask the phone person from India fielding the incoming calls to repeat the question a few more times so I can figure out what it is they are trying to say through their accents, and I could continue focusing on the obvious conspiracy unfolding in front of my very eyes on the basketball court. I mean, how else could a team averaging almost 100 points a game only manage 27 in the entire first half of the most important game of the year for them?

Anyway, I finally finished ordering the pizza online and suddenly “The Pizza Tracker” appeared on my screen. It looked a bit like an over-sized downloading bar. The left end was glowing and pulsating, as though my pizza had just begun its download process.

And sure enough, that’s exactly what was going on. Above the glowing end was the header “Order Placed”. Looking right, above the over-sized download bar, I noticed the other headers, Prep, Bake, Box, and Delivery.

Below the bar, it told me that I had ordered my pizza at 8:55 PM.

I watched as my pizza was prepped and put in the oven at 8:57 PM by Kevin.

The second half of the game was under way and I could tell the real North Carolina team had finally made it to the arena and taken over for the replacements that had covered for them in the first half. But I was even more amazed at what was going on on my computer screen when my pizza was placed into a HeatWave™ bag at precisely 9:03 PM.

Then 2 minutes later, as I noticed North Carolina had somehow already turned a 28 point deficit into a 4 point barn-burner, the final third of the over-sized download bar started pulsating and told me that Thomas left the store with my pizza at 9:05 PM.

At 9:09 PM, I went upstairs and turned on the porch light…just as Thomas was pulling up in my driveway.

I went back downstairs missing less of what had turned into a great game while waiting upstairs for the pizza than I had while watching the Pizza Tracker sitting in front of the TV. Of course, now that I had my pizza and was paying attention to the game again, Kansas was pulling away again. But I had a very good pizza to make the lousy game a little more bearable.

Intended to be for young adults when it was written, ‘Coraline’ fell to the same fate as Harry Potter and ended up being enjoyed by not-so-young adults as much as its intended audience.

The story is of a brave little girl left on her own to save her parents, and herself, from an evil, lonely, button-eyed spirit that lives in a different world behind a door that has been bricked off in her new home. With a little help from her oddball neighbors that share the large boarding house, she is able to match wits with the spirit in such a way that Gaiman actually makes believable.

The novella is a quick read and once you start, you want to make sure you have time to finish because you won’t want to put it down as you follow Coraline on her quest until it is done. And even when you think it IS done, you discover there is still a little more.

Even though the book was intended for the young, young and old alike will thoroughly enjoy a few days in the life of this clever, little self-proclaimed explorer, Coraline, not Caroline, as she points out more than a few times, but Coraline.

I give it a 4.2 on a 5.0 scale. A recommended read.