I'm on the east coast, my database (mysql) server is on the west. How do we resolve our differences?

[eluser]Michael Wales[/eluser]

Hmm, that seems like the right technique, but I don’t think it would work. If I insert, say, NOW(), into MySQL, it is in PDT. So if I set the time reference to GMT, and then set timezones, wouldn’t it set timezones around PDT? My web server is also in PDT, if that matters.

You're not inserting MySQL's NOW() into the database. You are inserting the returned data from Code Igniter's now() function within the Date helper.