I don't understand how to get the columns I want from rails. I have two models - A User and a Profile. A User :has_many Profile (because users can revert back to an earlier version of their profile):

> DESCRIBE users;
+----------------+--------------+------+-----+---------+----------------+
| Field          | Type         | Null | Key | Default | Extra          |
+----------------+--------------+------+-----+---------+----------------+
| id             | int(11)      | NO   | PRI | NULL    | auto_increment |
| username       | varchar(255) | NO   | UNI | NULL    |                |
| password       | varchar(255) | NO   |     | NULL    |                |
| last_login     | datetime     | YES  |     | NULL    |                |
+----------------+--------------+------+-----+---------+----------------+

> DESCRIBE profiles;
+----------------+--------------+------+-----+---------+----------------+
| Field          | Type         | Null | Key | Default | Extra          |
+----------------+--------------+------+-----+---------+----------------+
| id             | int(11)      | NO   | PRI | NULL    | auto_increment |
| user_id        | int(11)      | NO   | MUL | NULL    |                |
| first_name     | varchar(255) | NO   |     | NULL    |                |
| last_name      | varchar(255) | NO   |     | NULL    |                |
|      .                .          .      .       .             .       |
|      .                .          .      .       .             .       |
|      .                .          .      .       .             .       |
+----------------+--------------+------+-----+---------+----------------+

In SQL, I can run the query:

> SELECT * FROM profiles JOIN users ON profiles.user_id = users.id LIMIT 1;
+----+-----------+----------+---------------------+---------+---------------+-----+
| id | username  | password | last_login          | user_id | first_name    | ... |
+----+-----------+----------+---------------------+---------+---------------+-----+
| 1  | john      | ******   | 2010-12-30 18:04:28 | 1       | John          | ... |
+----+-----------+----------+---------------------+---------+---------------+-----+

See how I get all the columns for BOTH tables JOINED together? However, when I run this same query in Rails, I don't get all the columns I want - I only get those from Profile:

# in rails console
>> p = Profile.joins(:user).limit(1)
>> [#<Profile ...>]
>> p.first_name
>> NoMethodError: undefined method `first_name' for #<ActiveRecord::Relation:0x102b521d0> from /Library/Ruby/Gems/1.8/gems/activerecord-3.0.1/lib/active_record/relation.rb:373:in `method_missing' from (irb):8
# I do NOT want to do this (AKA I do NOT want to use "includes")
>> p.user
>> NoMethodError: undefined method `user' for #<ActiveRecord::Relation:0x102b521d0> from /Library/Ruby/Gems/1.8/gems/activerecord-3.0.1/lib/active_record/relation.rb:373:in method_missing' from (irb):9

I want to (efficiently) return an object that has all the properties of Profile and User together. I don't want to :include the user because it doesn't make sense. The user should always be part of the most recent profile as if they were fields within the Profile model. How do I accomplish this?