g1smd - 2:48 pm on Feb 15, 2012 (gmt 0)

Make sure you convert all dates/times to a standard time zone such as UTC before storing them.

Although it's February 15th here now (in the UK), for some places it is already February 16th.

The project deadline for 2012-02-18 16:00 Japan Local Time would be stored as 2012-02-18 07:00 UTC.

This allows the US contractor to easily see that he needs to be all done by 2012-02-17 23:00 California Time.