Kinda reminds me of this article http://dev.mysql.com/tech-resources/articles/wizard/index.html

Welcome to the MySQL monitor. Commands end with ; or \g.
Your MySQL connection id is 3154
Server version: 5.5.13 MySQL Community Server (GPL)

Copyright (c) 2000, 2010, Oracle and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.

Oracle is a registered trademark of Oracle Corporation and/or its
affiliates. Other names may be trademarks of their respective
owners.

Type ‘help;’ or ‘\h’ for help. Type ‘\c’ to clear the current input statement.

mysql Sat Sep 3 09:08:23 2011 > select timestamp(’20081223094234.572′);
+———————————+
| timestamp(’20081223094234.572′) |
+———————————+
| 2008-12-23 09:42:34.572000 |
+———————————+
1 row in set (0.00 sec)

mysql Sat Sep 3 09:08:51 2011 > show variables like ‘sql_mode’;
+—————+——————————————————————————————————————————————————+
| Variable_name | Value |
+—————+——————————————————————————————————————————————————+
| sql_mode | STRICT_TRANS_TABLES,STRICT_ALL_TABLES,NO_ZERO_IN_DATE,NO_ZERO_DATE,ERROR_FOR_DIVISION_BY_ZERO,TRADITIONAL,NO_AUTO_CREATE_USER,NO_ENGINE_SUBSTITUTION |
+—————+——————————————————————————————————————————————————+
1 row in set (0.02 sec)

mysql Sat Sep 3 09:08:55 2011 >

For instance, even this fails:

select timestamp(’20081223094234.572′)

I keep getting “Input string was not in a correct format”