both of the their timezones are set for PST.
/etc/wall_cmos_clock doesn't exist on either machine.
sysctl machdep.wall_cmos_clock = 0 on both
everything seems consistent so far, right?
but one of them is 8 hours behind or so... thinking the BIOS clock is PST time.
update: i'm dumb. the second machine's BIOS clock wasn't set to UTC time. :-P