help with time of day

hello–

im attempting to run an old plugin. i tried using the regular call for time <?php the_time('M Y') ?> and it works, however, every post says “in the wee hours”…. any ideas? i assume it is not up to date for 2.9.1. if anyone could offer any advice on how to make it work i would sincerely appreciate it.

function time_of_day($content) {
   //$pdate = strtotime($content);
   $pdate = strtotime(str_replace("<br />","",$content)); //WP-Admin adds a break tag for display purposes which we have to strip out.
   $hour=date('H',$pdate);
   switch($hour)
		{
		case 0:
		case 1:
		case 2:
			$tod = 'in the wee hours';
			break;
		case 3:
		case 4:
		case 5:
		case 6:
			$tod = 'terribly early in the morning';
			break;
		case 7:
		case 8:
		case 9:
			$tod = 'in the early morning';
			break;
		case 10:
			$tod = 'mid-morning';
			break;
		case 11:
			$tod = 'just before lunchtime';
			break;
		case 12:
		case 13:
			$tod = 'around lunchtime';
			break;
		case 14:
			$tod = 'in the early afternoon';
			break;
		case 15:
		case 16:
			$tod = 'mid-afternoon';
			break;
		case 17:
			$tod = 'in the late afternoon';
			break;
		case 18:
		case 19:
			$tod = 'in the early evening';
			break;
		case 20:
		case 21:
			$tod = 'at around evening time';
			break;
		case 22:
			$tod = 'in the late evening';
			break;
		case 23:
			$tod = 'late at night';
			break;
		default:
			$tod = '';
			break;
		}
	return $tod;
}
add_filter('the_time','time_of_day');
?>

i am using this in the loop

<?php time_of_day(abs(strtotime($post->post_date)));?>

thank you again