It seems that Time.parse will treat 9/12/2010 as December 9, 2010:
irb(main):012:0> RUBY_VERSION
=> "1.9.2"
irb(main):013:0> Time.parse('9/12/2010')
=> 2010-12-09 00:00:00 -0800
irb(main):014:0> Time.parse('9/12/2010 7:10pm')
=> 2010-12-09 19:10:00 -0800
I can use Regex to mess with the order and parse accordingly, but is there a different method or gem or any simpler method?