title: How to create a new DateTime object in a specific time zone (preferably the default time zone of my app, not UTC)?
body: <p>I have set the time zone in <code>/config/application.rb</code>, and I expect all times generated in my app to be in this time zone by default, yet when I create a new <code>DateTime</code> object (using <code>.new</code>), it creates it in <code>GMT</code>. How can I get it to be in my app's time zone?</p>
  <p><strong>config/application.rb</strong></p>
  <pre class="lang-ruby prettyprint-override"><code>config.time_zone = 'Pacific Time (US &amp; Canada)'
  </code></pre>
  <p><strong>irb</strong></p>
  <pre class="lang-ruby prettyprint-override"><code>DateTime.now
  # =&gt; Wed, 11 Jul 2012 19:04:56 -0700 
  
  mydate = DateTime.new(2012, 07, 11, 20, 10, 0)
  # =&gt; Wed, 11 Jul 2012 20:10:00 +0000                    # GMT, but I want PDT
  </code></pre>
  <p>Using <code>in_time_zone</code> doesn't work because that just converts the GMT time to PDT time, which is the wrong time:</p>
  <pre class="lang-ruby prettyprint-override"><code>mydate.in_time_zone('Pacific Time (US &amp; Canada)')
  # =&gt; Wed, 11 Jul 2012 13:10:00 PDT -07:00               # wrong time (I want 20:10)
  </code></pre>