I like to keep my system clock and my hardware clock set to local time.

After fiddling with ntpdate and trying to understand all of the intricate and confusing linux time settings, I took total control of the situation with the following script that I run at each bootup and via a cron job every day at 6:30 am.
#!/bin/bash

#To get a list of server names and ip addresses, go to
# http://www.nist.gov/pml/div688/grp40/its.cfm

#Get the time from an internet time server
hhmmss=$(rdate -p -4 -u time-a.nist.gov | tr -s " " | cut -d' ' -f4)

#hhmmss is now a time field of the form hh:mm:ss in utc format

utchour=$(echo $hhmmss | cut -d':' -f1)
minute=$(echo $hhmmss | cut -d':' -f2)
second=$(echo $hhmmss | cut -d':' -f3)

#for my timezone, my offset from utc is 5 hours
OFFSET=5

#To convert the hours to local time
hour=$(( $(($utchour+24-$OFFSET)) % 24 ))

thetime="$hour:$minute:$second"
echo $thetime

#set the system time to thetime
sudo date -s $thetime

#set the hardware clock to the system time
sudo hwclock --systohc

date > /home/knoppix/date.log