Wow, what a snafu. Object.present? didn't perform as expected.

What I get for writing my own helpers similar but not identical to rail 3 :)

app/helpers/application_helper.rb

@@ -54,7 +54,7 @@ def track_name_for(asset, length=40)
   # in the middle of an entity ex.: truncate("this & that",9)  => "this &am..."
   # though it will not be the exact length.
   def awesome_truncate(text, length = 30, truncate_string = "...")
-    return unless text.present?
+    return if text.blank?
     l = length - truncate_string.mb_chars.length
     text.mb_chars.length > length ? text[/\A.{#{l}}\w*\;?/m][/.*[\w\;]/m] + truncate_string : text
   end