changing datestyle

This is driving me a little nuts.

SET datestyle = 'us';
ALTER DATABASE mydb SET datestyle = 'us';
ALTER USER me SET datestyle = 'us';

In postgresql.conf:
datestyle = 'us'

And yet datestyle continues to come back as 'ISO, MDY'.

Re-doing all this using 'MDY, MDY' doesn't work either.

I don't much care about the input format, since postgres is pretty
flexible, but it'd sure be nice to get m/d/y out without having to
manually convert it in all my queries.

What am I missing?

If it helps, I'm running 8.3.7 on Debian Lenny.

Thanks.
Karl Nack Futurity, Inc.773-506-2007