Modified Date changes to now by selecting (not opening) vmwarevm file

Question

Yosemite OSX 10.10.2
VMware Fusion is currently not running, and it's disabled (an older version not compatible with Yosemite has not yet been upgraded) so I don't think Fusion is doing this....
I have VM files (.vmwarevm) that were not opened for months. I want to see which is which by viewing the date stamp in Finder. Clicking once shows the old date, then almost instantly it is changed to Now.  Like this:
Created 2009-04-13, 1:23 PM
Modified Today, <now>
Last Opened Today, <now>
... but once changed those dates do not change again.
I found an un-clicked one and it did the same thing, with <now> as the time stamp on that one. Now I have files with slightly different "today" date stamps which is incorrect and not helpful to determine the age of these files.
It appears something (Preview?) is opening the file to access the content and generate a "recent screenshot" for the current state of the VM.
I found no other files [edit: no other file types] that behave this way.
I duplicated and renamed an odt file to .vmwarevm and it does not result in a Modified or Last Opened date change.
(one of the VMs also doesn't change so I suspect a bad file format).

Answer 1

Acrobat 9 makes PDF versions 4.0 and higher. You need a PDF version 5.0 to handle transparencies well. PDF version 4.0 doesn't handle transparency effects well at all.
Pagemaker needs Acrobat 5 to be able to directly export PDF's with custom job settings. It only generates a PDF version 4.0, but works for our needs in Pagemaker.
I choose to keep both Distiller versions to make our work easier. When you have 20 ads open in Pagemaker, and you send the first one as a postscript through the print window, it sets up the "File, Export" in Pagemaker to use the correct PDF job setting, and then you can just do "File, Export to PDF" for the next 19 ads and it makes perfect PDF's. Works slick instead of having to make postscripts of all 20 ads first and then run them through Distiller. If you only have Distiller 9 installed, it doesn't let you select any custom job settings from your Distiller. Crazy, I know, but that's what I've figured out we have to do to get it to work. Have to have Distiller 5.0 to control PDF settings in Pagemaker and still be able to export from the file menu directly to PDF.
Distiller 9 is used for all other more advanced design pieces created in InDesign or Photoshop that are saved as a postscript first and PDF's are made the long way in those cases (running postscript through Distiller 9 at the end).