Ruby XMLRPC::CLIENT issue under Rails 2.3.5 with Ruby 1.8.6

Question

I'm trying to implement a ping to an xmlrpc server written in PHP under CodeIgniter. The system currently works as expected when receiving pings from WordPress-based blogs, but I'm unable to generate a successful ping from Rails. The code I'm using to generate the ping is:

require 'xmlrpc/client'
server = XMLRPC::Client.new("digital466.local", "/schafercondoncarter/xmlrpc")
result = server.call_async("ping", BLOG_CONFIG['title'], "http://digital466.local:3000")

The code runs fine in script/console, and retrieves a correctly formatted response from the server, but when I integrate the code into a rails observer or controller, I receive the following error message:

 Timeout::Error in PostsController#update

execution expired

RAILS_ROOT: /Users/digital466/Sites/sccblog
Application Trace | Framework Trace | Full Trace

/System/Library/Frameworks/Ruby.framework/Versions/1.8/usr/lib/ruby/1.8/timeout.rb:60:in `rbuf_fill'
/System/Library/Frameworks/Ruby.framework/Versions/1.8/usr/lib/ruby/1.8/net/protocol.rb:132:in `rbuf_fill'
/System/Library/Frameworks/Ruby.framework/Versions/1.8/usr/lib/ruby/1.8/net/protocol.rb:116:in `readuntil'
/System/Library/Frameworks/Ruby.framework/Versions/1.8/usr/lib/ruby/1.8/net/protocol.rb:126:in `readline'
/System/Library/Frameworks/Ruby.framework/Versions/1.8/usr/lib/ruby/1.8/net/http.rb:2020:in `read_status_line'
/System/Library/Frameworks/Ruby.framework/Versions/1.8/usr/lib/ruby/1.8/net/http.rb:2009:in `read_new'
/System/Library/Frameworks/Ruby.framework/Versions/1.8/usr/lib/ruby/1.8/net/http.rb:1050:in `request'
/System/Library/Frameworks/Ruby.framework/Versions/1.8/usr/lib/ruby/1.8/net/http.rb:992:in `post2'
/System/Library/Frameworks/Ruby.framework/Versions/1.8/usr/lib/ruby/1.8/xmlrpc/client.rb:529:in `do_rpc'
/System/Library/Frameworks/Ruby.framework/Versions/1.8/usr/lib/ruby/1.8/net/http.rb:543:in `start'
/System/Library/Frameworks/Ruby.framework/Versions/1.8/usr/lib/ruby/1.8/xmlrpc/client.rb:528:in `do_rpc'
/System/Library/Frameworks/Ruby.framework/Versions/1.8/usr/lib/ruby/1.8/xmlrpc/client.rb:435:in `call2_async'
/System/Library/Frameworks/Ruby.framework/Versions/1.8/usr/lib/ruby/1.8/xmlrpc/client.rb:425:in `call_async'
/Users/digital466/Sites/sccblog/app/controllers/posts_controller.rb:89:in `update'

Any assistance would be appreciated. Thanks in advance.