[ubuntu-in] Referencing Time

[Moz]

Hello,

I administer a website, which is hosted on a shared plan. The time on
the server is variable and I can not run cron jobs at proper time
using the date command in my shell scripts. NTP support seems not to
be installed. It is a Red Hat OS server. I would like to know if there
is some other way to take a reference time. For example, emails sent
from my local computer which includes a special date string or
something like that, which can be referenced by the shell script? I
use Ubuntu Lucid.

I do not have authority to set date/time on the server, and I have
tried to have the admin change the time, but it only makes things
worse as the changes are not as expected.

Can you suggest a way to run cron jobs at fixed times without using
the system date and time?

Regards

Moz