Ara

Astrology programs generally take into account your time zone when calculating your chart.
If your time and place of birth are correct, and it says you're an aries rising, you ARE an aries rising.
It might well be that your mars is poorly aspected or that you've got a strong pisces element somewhere else in your chart (such as planets in pisces or perhaps neptune aspects).

I don't think it matters how close to either time zone border you were born. As far as time zones is concerned: As long as you input the right one (which is usually done automatically), you should get the right chart. It's all up to your exact location really. The chart calculating algorithms calculates in relation to your exact place of birth, not in relation to your time zone. The only reason why time zones is involved, is so that you can synchronise the universal time with the time on your birth certificate.

Either way, 4 minutes isn't much, so you could be a Pisces rising if your time of birth isn't accurate enough. If your birth time says something like 8:44 AM, then it's probably quite accurate, but if it says 8:45 AM, it's probably not. And then the hospital clock could've been a few minutes ahead too. I mean, to a astrologer it would be a priority to make sure the hospital clocks are accurate, but for "normal" people it usually isn't a priority.

I knew a girl once who had her sun at 0.00' Pisces, and she said she felt like a Aquarius *and* a Pisces, and she seemed to demonstrate the same. I think of the signs as evolutionary processes which flow one to the next, and some of the constellations overlap, so it's really a matter of studying and deciding which one you identify with, or both. Some astrologers say you either have to be or the other, but I like to think that the person knows themself better than the astrologer.

Having said that, whether the sun or ascendant is on a cusp, the other planets and their aspects may make the native feel more like one side of the coin over the other. So, if a person has an ascendant at 28.59' Aquarius, but their other points and aspects are heavy on the Pisces side, the natural course of chart progressions would make me comfortable with either identification. It just means that their early life inclined them to manage their Piscean tendencies with more of an Aquarian edge, and they eased comfortably into the Pisces role by the time they reached adulthood. This example would probably mean the native had more airy Aquarian intellectual development in their early life than someone born with a 1 degree Pisces ascendant, but they'd still be very Pisces.

In a nutshell, I think people with cusp aspects can have both of the sign qualities pertaining to the signs between the cusp(s) in question. I don't think things have to be black and white. I really hope that all made sense, lol.

I'd assume that it does.