The difference between night and day

I couldn't figure out what was wrong with the airline notification process.
It was the day before we were to fly to England starting with a short flight to Las Vegas to make a connection to Virgin Atlantic.
That was scheduled for 9:50 in the morning with a long layover between flights so we could catch what is basically a Red-eye flight to Gatwick airport in London.
I was expecting an email inviting me to check in online so as I puttered around packing the last-minute items and getting the house ready for a two-week absence I kept checking the computer.
I wasn't getting anything.
By noon I was perturbed.

What you say?

I really like to have things together before we travel including boarding passes printed from the home computer.
What was the problem here?
Was Delta's site down?
Were they running the company with morons?
By mid-afternoon I was trying to break into the Delta website without an introductory email. I had a confirmation number for the flights I had booked way back in early January.
I gave the site my Delta Skymiles card numbers and every bit of information I had.
Finally I got this little note back.
"It is more than 24 hours before your flight departure time," said the message.
What?
I couldn't believe how dumb the website was.
It certainly WAS less than 24 hours until our flight.
It was now 4:30 in the afternoon and our flight was scheduled to leave at 9:50 p.m.
Whoa.
P.M.?
Did it really say P.M.?
It was supposed to say A.M.
I stared really hard at the print-out I had willing it to change before my eyes.
We couldn't go at 9:50 P.M.
I called Delta and told the nice lady my story. Certainly there'd been a mistake, right?
Right.
My mistake that ultimately cost us $500 for new last-minute tickets and $250 for the non-refundable tickets we wouldn't be using. Ouch.
About the only good thing about is it lets Marc off the hook for being in trouble for quite a while...His occasional misses and slip-ups don't quite match this one.