Ruby on Rails

I noticed some strange behaviour with connection_pool.with_connection and it's probably because I am not understanding the proper usage.  If I call with_connection, it seems to me that the connection within the block is not used with the ActiveRecord methods. First a simple == comparison.

Then examining the number of active connections after using the with_connection method:

=> {"ActiveRecord::Base"=>#<ActiveRecord::ConnectionAdapters::ConnectionPool:0x105b3e5d>} 

jruby-1.5.1 > ActiveRecord::Base.connection_pool.instance_eval{ @checked_out.length }

jruby-1.5.1 > ActiveRecord::Base.connection_pool.with_connection{ |c|  EmailAccount.last }

jruby-1.5.1 > ActiveRecord::Base.connection_pool.instance_eval{ @checked_out.length }   

 => 1

I found this lighthouse ticket https://rails.lighthouseapp.com/projects/8994-ruby-on-rails/tickets/1752, but it seems to have been resolved.  I am using ActiveRecord  2.3.8.

thx.

-karl