title: How can I use Ruby to parse a time as though it is in a time zone I specify, with zone in the format America/Los_Angeles?
body: <p>I want to be able to parse a Time from a string in Ruby (1.8.7), where the string does not contain any time zone information.  I would like to treat the string as though it were in any of a number of time zones specified in this type of format: 'America/New_York'.  </p>
  
  <p>Time string example:</p>
  
  <pre><code>'2010-02-05 01:00:01'
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>I have spent quite a while trying to figure this one out.</p>
  
  <p>I did find a similar question, but its answer does not apply in my case: <a href="https://stackoverflow.com/questions/4262550/how-do-i-get-ruby-to-parse-time-as-if-it-were-in-a-different-time-zone">How do I get Ruby to parse time as if it were in a different time zone?</a></p>
  
  <p>The problem with the above solution is that my time zones cannot all be represented in the 3-letter format supported by Time.parse (<a href="http://www.ruby-doc.org/stdlib-1.8.7/libdoc/time/rdoc/classes/Time.html#M004931" rel="nofollow noreferrer">http://www.ruby-doc.org/stdlib-1.8.7/libdoc/time/rdoc/classes/Time.html#M004931</a>).</p>
  
  <p>Is there a good way to accomplish what I'm trying to do here?</p>
  
  <p>Edit: Made my answer actually appear as an answer.</p>