Trying to follow along with: http://wiki.rubyonrails.com/rails/show/HowtoUseMultipleDatabases specifically this code (with my connection specs) in my controller: ActiveRecord::Base.establish_connection( :adapter => "mysql", :host => "localhost", :username => "mr_roboto", :password => "secret_secret_i_got_a_secret", :database => db_name ) gives the following in the WEBrick console: #<RuntimeError: bad header ''"adapter_method : mysql_connection\n"''.> ["c:/ruby/lib/ruby/1.8/webrick/httputils.rb:143:in ''parse_header''", [ rest of stack trace ] It looks like the call to establish_connection is stepping on the request headers?? Why would there be an error parsing http headers trying to make a database connection? Or does this method not work with WEBrick?