I didn't have any problems either. (Why is that funny? I'm in HST.)

I do keep my laptop on Pacific time and it updated automatically.

cpx is correct. NTP is UTC. Native time is also kept in UTC in most operating systems. Most TOD chips count "ticks" since a well-known date called the epoch.

The type and format of the date/time returned to applications depends on the library or system call they use.

-David