Does crux always store datetimes as UTC or is there an option to use different timezones as well?

They're stored as java.util.Date so UTC - in your app you would have to store the timezome in the document (or in fixed configuration) and use java.time.ZonedDateTime to convert the date to local time.

ok, as the adventure continues....what is the "proper" way in crux to leverage indexes that are based on inequalities. Think 100 timecards/day, over 10 years, and I want to pull out those from 1Q-2001.

crux answers this question correctly, but it "feels" like it is going through all the entities and applying the predicates rather than leveraging the index that would strike most of them