[MERGE] make local_time_offset() more reliable (bug 77588)

[John Arbash Meinel]

John Arbash Meinel has voted +1.
Status is now: Semi-approved
Comment:
I could see adding a test that checks the returned value is an integer 
in the proper range (+-86400?, +-43200?)

That should at least test our assumption about what this function 
returns.

I'm pretty sure it will always return a real integer, but we *might* 
want to wrap it in an int().

For details, see: 
http://bundlebuggy.aaronbentley.com/request/%3Ca7e835d40701020002j5c2b7027j77510de44f58d52b%40mail.gmail.com%3E