Thanks, balsabandit, I appreciate the good words and the effort they took!

Alienx, I left out one small part of my overall alignment process. I take a pin and stick it in the very back of the vertical fin, and tie a string to it with even lengths hanging off of it. Use these to stretch out to the wing. I usually use the outer aileron pocket edge to measure to. Now, using any find of pen or thin marker, mark the string where it touches the edge of the aileron pocket. Once both are done, stretch the two strings straight backward and see where the marks are in relation to each other. Figuring that you're pulling them back towards you, the string with the mark closest to you means that the wingtip which that one correlates to is pushed forward some, and the other wingtip of course is pushed back. The idea is that once they are the same distance from that pin then that wing should be pretty square to the fuselage.
This of course doesn't account for a thousand little variables like twisted, nasty fuselages from the factory and things like that. When it looks crooked no matter how much your string says it is straight, then you have to decide yourself. The end result being that it's still probably going to fly pretty well as long as you got it pretty close on all the other alignments.

The BEST alignment advice I can give is that you should stop into the forums and check out any new plane you are considering. If it's been out more than two months I guarantee you that there are posts related to the building and whatever cussing had to be done during that building! That can give you a heads-up on potential problems. For instance, last year I fell in love with that Sig Sun Dancer ARF Bipe, but I didn't know how good it was. I went out there into the forums and found out that it had been pretty well recieved but that some top wings had been popping off! There was enough wing area in the lower wing that most of them had been able to make a good landing ( Good=didn't crash and burn, made it down alive!) Turns out some early hardware had been failing but I also found out that Sig had rectified it and was sending out upgraded hardware for that part to the guys who already had one (who requested it) and of course was including the upgraded hardware in the new Sun Dancers. I found guys that complained that the paints didn't match from the fuse to the cowl. I looked at mine and could not see any difference no matter how hard I looked.

It's all what you make of it. I notice that nobody actually asked you if this is your first plane to fly, but I gather that it probably is. If it is, give it a rest and go and get yourself an ARF trainer, because although a Cessna is not a particularly hard plane to fly, it is not a trainer by any stretch of the imagination. It's important that you start out with a trainer, they are forgiving of the mistakes that every new flyer makes. If you're already flying, then just ignore me, I go away eventually!

Jim