Very simply:
1. The hwclock is set to UCT/GMT. That means that at boot time the machine needs to determine the time zone and adjust the system clock.
2. I've used tzconfig to set my timezone appropriately. /etc/timezone reflects this value.
3. When I boot the system, the init scripts fail to properly set the system clock to hwclock-time + time zone adjustment, as shown by `date`, gkrellm, etc.
More verbose than the initial cliff-notes version, but the same information. There was no 'guessing' to be done.
Regards,
-scott anderson
"Welcome to Rivendell, Mr. Anderson..."