Time Clock Applet causes BIOS Clock to run six hours ahead

To whom it may concern:

I was checking the system BIOS just now, and saw that the BIOS clock was exactly six hours ahead. I reset that and ran Ubuntu 8.04.3 hardy, and got a time that was six hours behind of the GMT-5:00 time I live at. Running the time applet via gui, I found that the local settings for the area I live in was right, but the time zone was wrong. Instead of America/Chicago, it was Europe/Kalingrad. Once I set the time zone to the correct area, I checked the BIOS clock again and found it to be one hour ahead. Hardy shows the correct time after update. I have Clock Preferences set to show twenty-four hour, show seconds, Locations, and wind speed units as mph. These are not default settings.

Is it possible to change settings in this clock applet without entering the administrator password? If so, this could possibly allow an outside internet user to change other settings on this computer without user knowledge or permission.

I checked the most likely answer to my question, and found only one, clock applet shows only UTC time no matter what my location is, did not apply.

My point is, if I set the time zone properly to begin with, how or why did the time zone change on it's own?

steve