How to get text from a RadTextBox in Javascript

[Matt]

I have a RadTextBox on the page. I read the client side API page for textbox. It said to use something like this:

var shipControl = $find("txtShippingFirstName");
var text = shipControl.get_textBoxValue; ( have also tried just get_Value and it didn't work either.)
alert(text);

However, the alert is just this : "function() {return this._textBoxElement.value;}

So how can I get the text value of a RadTextBox correctly with Javascript?

[Matt]

Nevermind, I am an idiot. Forgot the () on the function call.