jQuery dataTable custom sort picking up OLD HTML?

I have this custom sorter on a dataTable:

jQuery.fn.dataTableExt.oSort['abbr-date-asc']  = function(a,b) { 
  var x = a.match(/abbr="(.*?)"/)[1]; 
  var y = b.match(/abbr="(.*?)"/)[1]; 
  return ((x < y) ? -1 : ((x > y) ?  1 : 0)); 
};

When I enter the debugger what is in the A variable is OLD HTML, i.e what is there when the page is first drawn. After the page is drawn and in the onReady function before this code ^^ is executed I redraw the TDS in my table to be different HTML that I want this custom sorter to pick up. It is picking up the old stuff. Any idea?

EDIT: HERE IS THE HTML

<span abbr="">     
    <span class="localtimeUTC" style="display: none;">Dec 03, 2011</span>
    <span class="localtimeUTCabbr" style="display: none;">2011-12-03</span>   
</span>

And this is the HTML on the page at the time of click when I want to sort it:

<span abbr="2011-12-03">Dec 03, 2011</span>

It is picking up the original. I have tried using 开发者_如何学PythonbUseRendered: false in the table definition, no dice. I tried converting the sort function to a closure, no dice.

  jQuery('#my_table').dataTable( { 
    "bJQueryUI": true, 
    "bAutoWidth": false, 
    "bUseRendered" : false, 
    "aoColumns" : [ 
    { sWidth: '5%', bSortable: false, bSearchable: false }, 
    { sWidth: '35%' }, 
    { sWidth: '15%' }, 
    { sWidth: '15%', sType: 'abbr-date', bSortDataType: "abbr-date" }, 
    { sWidth: '30%', bSortable: false, bSearchable: false } 
    ], 
}).show();

OK I found the answer: I was not using DataTable properly. I was re-rendering TDs using my own JS outside of the DataTable but using a combination of

fnRender bUseRendered: false Firebug

I was able to have the current, proper HTML returned. It turns out that DataTable keeps a cache of the original table by default and by using these two things I was able to get current HTML.