Logged In: YES 
user_id=357491

The .lower() call is intended to normalize since capitalization is not 
standard across OSs.  But if it is a Unicode string it should be fine.  And 
even if it isn't, it is all lowercased for comparison anyway, so as long as 
it is consistent, shouldn't it still work?

As for your example of strptime not being able to parse, you have a bug 
in it; you forgot the format string.  It should have been 
``time.strptime(time.strftime('%Z'), '%Z')``.  Give that a run and let me 
know what the output is.

As for this whole multi-byte issue, is it all being returned as Unicode 
strings, or is it just a regular string?  In other words, what is 
``type(time.tzname[0])`` spitting out?  And what character encoding is 
all of this in (i.e., what should I pass to unicode so as to not have it raise 
UnicodeDecodeError)?

And finally, for the regex metacharacter stuff, why the hell are there 
parentheses in a timezone?!?  Whoever decided that was good did it just 
to upset me.  That does need to be fixed.  Apply the patch I just 
uploaded and let me know if it at least deals with that problem.

Have I mentioned I hate timezones?  In case I haven't, I do.  Thanks for 
catching this all, though, George.