That function is really old and module, I would like to say, is in-officially deprecated. We try to not use the old ConfigurationManager (in favor of `configman.ConfigurationManager`).

If you really need a way to specify the interval with that kind of accuracy, I would suggest **copying** the contents of `timeDeltaConverter` into this file. That will make it easier to officially depreated the `socorro.lib.ConfigurationManager`.

Or a much *simpler* solution would be to deal entirely in seconds. E.g. 

```python

    required_config.add_option(
        'processing_interval_seconds',
        default=5 * 60,
        doc='How often we process reports (in seconds)'
    )
...
start_time -= datetime.timedelta(seconds=self.config.processing_interval_seconds) 
```