added a valides :user_id, presence: true command to the Micropost model.  In the tests for microposts checked to see that a nil Micropost object (nil in the user_id field) was invalid).
added tests to ensure that the user_id attribute of the micropost model was not settable, meaning that it was always associated with some user that was made to create it and could not simply be set to any user - like what happens when twitter gets hacked :).  also introduced the concept of one model being like a child of another, where the micropost model actually becomes a part of the user commands, micropost.user returns the user object; user.microposts returns an array of the users microposts; user.microposts.create(arg) creates a micropots - notice its not micropost.new but rather user.microposts.create(arg); user.microposts.create[bang](arg) using an exclamation to catch failutres and user.microposts.build(arg) to return a new mnicrpost object, i guess if they had multiple microposts per user.
removed the user_id attribute from the attributes accessible command in the microposts model, added testing to check if the micropost responded to the user command since it will be associated, checked the :user of a microposts, its(:user) { should == user} to ensure the right user is associated, and then in the user model made sure its responded to the micropost command with it { should respond_to(:microposts) }
added the has_many :microposts to the User model and the belongs_to :user to the Micropost model.  Also corrected some typos in the specs for the micropost and model
ok, when I associated the micropost model with the user model it made the user.microposts.build command, notice the S on the end of micropost?  well, its important b/c my tests were failing until I changed it over to the correct pluralization :).
added a factory to the spec directory to create microposts.  Associated it with the user simply by includign a user attribute in teh factory.
created a test for micropost associations using a describe block micropost assocation, a before statement for before {@user.save} and the letBANG method to create two microposts, adn older and a newer one.  Then called the @user.microposts to get the array list to check if it is equal to the array of microposts in reverse order of posting
had to comment out the auto generated factories file because it created a duplicate microposts factory.  not sure why this came up in the rails tutorial.  prolly my gem file doesn't match up exactly and factory girl had some sort of gem update.
corrected a bug in the edit page that had the link for changing the gravatar labelled incorrectly in the test.  tests are so cool...  Ensured that microposts were destroyed when their associated user was also destroyed by adding a dependent: :destroy option to the has_many association method in the user model