I used to be like you. Wandering around php sites thinking "lol unix timestamps are teh sux0rz."
But then I found strtotime. I am absolutely chuffed to bits with it. Since I first discovered it earlier today my quality of life has increased tenfold and my stress levels when dealing with time in code have dropped to record lows.
On a more serious note, this function really does make dealing with dates and times a lot easier. The posts per hour mod I made for the forum uses strtotime to get the timestamp of 'Last Monday' and 'Midnight today'. It's a lot easier to write and a lot easier to read than other ways to do the same thing.
Jet fuel can't make dank memes.