swap american date order so Ruby 1.9 Date._parse will understand it

american_date_parse.rb

# complete hack to swap date MM/DD/YYYY around to YYYY/MM/DD
# so Ruby 1.9 will parse American dates the way we like 'em
# (works in Rails due to use of alias_method_chain)

class Date
  class << self
    def _parse_with_american_date(str, comp=true)
      _parse_without_american_date(str.sub(/(\d{1,2})\/(\d{1,2})\/(\d{4})/, '\3/\1/\2'), comp)
    end
    alias_method_chain :_parse, :american_date
  end
end