Isn't there some type of clock on these things that keep going even when the power goes out? Or maybe I shouldn't be expecting so much from a $30 computer.
No and yes, its is a serious omission from the design, to save, what, a few pennies?
It should be possible to write startup/shutdown rc scripts to save the time on shutdown and reload it on boot (so you'll at least have the year correct), but you're still relying on ntpd to get the actual time off the internet. Have a look through the RasPi forums, someone will have solved this problem.(Google is your friend, or if not, then try DuckDuckGo).