Rails - Record Handling Tricks learned the hard way

- use dynamic model query methods described in: http://api.rubyonrails.org/classes/ActiveRecord/Base.html
- Story.order("column_ord").find_all_by_state("B").size returns the collection
- Story.order("column_ord").find_by_state("B").size returns only one story
- render(@collection) throws error if said collection is empty, so check <% if @collection then render(@collection) end %>
- assigns[:variablename] is how to get hold of a page object in the controller_test