diff --git a/CHANGELOG.md b/CHANGELOG.md
index c1185a63d..0b10c7e16 100644
--- a/CHANGELOG.md
+++ b/CHANGELOG.md
@@ -1,5 +1,9 @@
 # Changelog
 
+## 0.2.9 (June 15th, 2011)
+* fix a long standing bug where a signal would interrupt rb_thread_select and put the connection in a permanently broken state
+* turn on casting in the ActiveRecord again, users can disable it if they need to for performance reasons
+
 ## 0.2.8 (June 14th, 2011)
 * disable async support, and access to the underlying file descriptor under Windows. It's never worked reliably and ruby-core has a lot of work to do in order to make it possible.
 * added support for turning eager-casting off. This is especially useful in ORMs that will lazily cast values upon access.
diff --git a/lib/active_record/connection_adapters/mysql2_adapter.rb b/lib/active_record/connection_adapters/mysql2_adapter.rb
index c1a00e834..94511c258 100644
--- a/lib/active_record/connection_adapters/mysql2_adapter.rb
+++ b/lib/active_record/connection_adapters/mysql2_adapter.rb
@@ -562,7 +562,7 @@ def connect
         end
 
         def configure_connection
-          @connection.query_options.merge!(:as => :array, :cast => false)
+          @connection.query_options.merge!(:as => :array)
 
           # By default, MySQL 'where id is null' selects the last inserted id.
           # Turn this off. http://dev.rubyonrails.org/ticket/6778
diff --git a/lib/mysql2/version.rb b/lib/mysql2/version.rb
index 68342e6d9..dad0fa0e9 100644
--- a/lib/mysql2/version.rb
+++ b/lib/mysql2/version.rb
@@ -1,3 +1,3 @@
 module Mysql2
-  VERSION = "0.2.8"
+  VERSION = "0.2.9"
 end
\ No newline at end of file