[pasting this in from my reply to someone 'cause I gotta run out to a doctor's appt.]
It's essentially hair-splitting and meaningless re: the release date for a record for which we initially only pressed a thousand or two copies (?) w/ Absolutely Kosher, and even those, only on cd (it was 2003 after all, the iTunes store was only a couple months old, streaming was nearly a decade away and vinyl was still pre-resurrection). And I'd have to look back at a 20-year-old calendar, but in short, back then, for whatever reason (prob. some hold-over from industry-marketing of 78's or something), release dates were always on Tuesdays. But I wanted it to be on a Friday in part because at that time, if you were lucky enough to get a 'news' mention, on say a pitchfork etc., on a Friday, the piece would often hang around on the front page through that weekend, earning bonus miles.
And because we were initially talking just a few thousand copies, Cory/AbKosh, didn't especially care, but he did need to officially follow the then-standard protocol of a Tuesday release date, at least on paper, if only to draw a clear commonly-followed line in the sand that no one would be able to make it available for sale it early, in theory effectively pitting one retailer against another.
So it was actually the friday before or after that, I think after, which makes it..the 12th? Happy anniversary!
The other way of counting the release date is from the record release party/show, which I can't find online looking quickly, but was weeks later, at the Mercury Lounge with Palomar.