Timechart "yesterday" forced to display full 24 hours

I have a feeling there is a simple solution to this, I am just not seeing it. Possibly appending null data at the start and end of the time range.
GOAL: I want to create a dashboard showing "Yesterday", and 2 rows. First row contains a chart of multiple usage metrics (CPU, swap, lots of lines), right under that is a row with a bar chart of "events". Both charts should display the exact same time span. If the user picks "Yesterday", both graphs should show Midnight to Midnight even if there are only a few "events" in the second chart.
I do not want to overlay two chart types. I have other Advanced XML charts with overlays, but this set of data is too messy, and the charts need to be easy to read. Advanced XML okay if I can use that to force the chart x-axis range.

Example: 
    .. | search alert_host="$hostname$" |stats count(alert_host) by _time
    returns 
            _time   count(alert_host)
    1   7/25/13 1:15:10.000 AM  1
    2   7/25/13 3:05:05.000 AM  1
    3   7/25/13 3:20:05.000 AM  1
    4   7/25/13 4:00:05.000 AM  1
    5   7/25/13 4:15:05.000 AM  1
    6   7/25/13 4:35:05.000 AM  1
    7   7/25/13 4:45:05.000 AM  2
    8   7/25/13 5:10:05.000 AM  1
    9   7/25/13 7:00:05.000 AM  1
    10  7/25/13 8:20:05.000 AM  1

I have tried the chart two ways, both give the same result, only shows 1 am to 8 am not the full 24 hours.

.. | search alert_host="$hostname$" |timechart count
or 
.. | search alert_host="$hostname$" | timechart fixedrange=true count

We are using Splunk 5.0.1

Thanks in advance --AFL