Why is the forum time so far off from the actual time?

[AlanWoods]

The forum is set to an overall time offset of 2 hours....

"Not all forum administrators want their forum to use the same time zone as the server upon which it is hosted. Use this option to specify a time difference (in hours) from which the forum should operate from the server time."
  - quoted from the Admin settings

Since the web server is in Vancouver, BC.  We set it to US Central Time zone, because our office is in Chicagoland.  The forum does not keep time, it gets the time settings from your computer and personal profile settings and adds it to the time offset.

So actually the forum time is not off, but your personal profile settings are.  Please go into your Personal Profile, then in the Look & Layout Preferences, is a setting for your computer time offset.  If you're not sure what your time offset should be, click on 'autodetect', and the forum will set it for you.

We do not, as a rule, go into the individual members settings, unless there is a need, so there will be times when things like this popup.