Age old order by rand() issue

[Scott Haneda]

List search seems to return 0 results, and I am a bit stumped.

Getting a more optimized order by random with 1 record...
I found a snip online that works, but seems to return an empty on  
occasion, and I am not sure why:

SELECT storage_path, image_md5, id
  FROM images
   JOIN (SELECT CEIL(RAND() * (SELECT MAX(id) FROM images WHERE  
approved = 1)) AS id) AS r2 USING (id)
    WHERE approved = 1;

I really do not get this, SELECT CEIL(RAND() will always return 1 will  
it not?  Any idea why I get an empty result set at times?

I then managed to rig this together:
SELECT * FROM images AS t
  JOIN (SELECT CEIL(MAX(id)*RAND()) AS id
   FROM images WHERE approved = 1) AS x ON t.id >= x.id LIMIT 1;

This works, but I get an odd result, in that the id column is listed  
twice, once at the beginning, where it is in the table, and once at  
the end.  Duplicate values of course.

If I narrow the * to a real called select, such as
SELECT id, storage_path, image_md5 FROM images AS t
  JOIN (SELECT CEIL(MAX(id)*RAND()) AS id
   FROM images WHERE approved = 1) AS x ON t.id >= x.id LIMIT 1;

     ->   FROM images WHERE approved = 1) AS x ON t.id >= x.id LIMIT 1;
ERROR 1052 (23000): Column 'id' in field list is ambiguous

I can not seem to get past that error, and would like to call just the  
columns I want.  Or, if someone has a better random record return  
select, I am all ears.

Thanks so much.

--
Scott
talklists@stripped