How does one see what tasks starts when on Mountain Lion?

I have had a beachball problem for a number of weeks now, and still can not figure out what is going wrong after four separate Support Desk people and one Genius Bar visit -- maybe you, my friends in the Apple Support Communities, can help decypher this.

Symptoms:

Invariably, my MacBook Pro (MacBookPro8,2) with Mountain Lion (10.8.2) -- after exactly one hourof work (59 minutes, 58 seconds and then...) suddenly goes into beachball mode. No warning -- no new processes -- nothing but the beachball on the dialog I am working on. Within the next minute, all dialogs are unresponsive and I have to hard reboot my computer.

What is surprising is that when the beachball happens and I restart the system, all of my cookies (e.g., my Facebook login cookie, my Google 2-factor) and other status bookmarks (e.g., where the video stops on iTunes) disappear.

And if I wish to prolong my computer time, I have to put the computer in Sleep Mode for about 5 minutes, come back and get an additional hour of work before the beachball returns.

Scarily, I have watched it happen - and tracked the Activity Monitor and see nothing that pops up at that time point. No additional memory taken, no additional CPU -- nothing.

What is surprising is that when the beachball happens and I restart the system, all of my cookies (e.g., my Facebook login cookie, my Google 2-factor) and other status bookmarks (e.g., where the video stops on iTunes) disappear.

Additionally, when I boot in Safe mode - my 16G of RAM is almost totally taken up (15.1Gs) by nothing. Simply that 15.1Gs are "wired". The largest process is the mds - and that is only 500M.

Prior Efforts:

I have inspected the disk with Disk Utility, done both the Internet Hardware check (since my Recovery partition did not have it) and at the Genius Bar (with their super-special hardware check) and no problems. I have removed Launch Agents and Launch Daemons. I have removed startup items and purged the drive.

I keep being told I will have to erase and reinstall, but I think there is something much simplier here: some software that is being triggered to do something one hour after awaking from sleep.

I saw some people suggest it could be f.lux, but I have turned it off and it still happens. Additionally, one of my people suggested it was the Time Machine, so I turned it off -- and it still happened.

Any ideas what could be the problem?

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As per everyone else, here is my EtreCheck:

Hardware Information:

MacBook Pro - model: MacBookPro8,2

1 2.5 GHz Intel Core i7 CPU: 4 cores

16 GB RAM

Video Information:

Intel HD Graphics 3000 - VRAM: 512 MB

AMD Radeon HD 6770M - VRAM: 1024 MB

Startup Items:

ChmodBPF - Path: /Library/StartupItems/ChmodBPF

HWNetMgr - Path: /Library/StartupItems/HWNetMgr

HWPortDetect - Path: /Library/StartupItems/HWPortDetect

MySQLCOM - Path: /Library/StartupItems/MySQLCOM

VirtualBox - Path: /Library/StartupItems/VirtualBox

ZendServer_init - Path: /Library/StartupItems/ZendServer_init

System Software:

OS X 10.8.2 (12C60) - Uptime: 0 days 0:10

Disk Information:

M4-CT512M4SSD2 disk0 : (512.11 GB)

disk0s1 (disk0s1) <not mounted>: 209.7 MB

Macintosh HD (disk0s2) /: 511.25 GB (78.47 GB free)

Recovery HD (disk0s3) <not mounted>: 650 MB

MATSHITADVD-R UJ-8A8

USB Information:

Western Digital My Passport 07AE 500.07 GB

disk1s1 (disk1s1) <not mounted>: 209.7 MB

Recovery HD (disk1s2) <not mounted>: 650 MB

Backup Disk (disk1s3) /Volumes/Backup Disk: 494.59 GB (138.75 GB free)

Apple Inc. Apple Internal Keyboard / Trackpad

Apple Inc. BRCM2070 Hub

Apple Inc. Bluetooth USB Host Controller

Apple Inc. FaceTime HD Camera (Built-in)

DisplayLink UV195

Apple Computer, Inc. IR Receiver

FireWire Information:

Kernel Extensions:

com.avatron.AVExVideo Version: 1.7

com.displaylink.driver.DisplayLinkDriver Version: 1.8

net.telestream.driver.TelestreamAudio Version: 1.0.5

com.vara.driver.VaraAudio Version: 1.0.3

com.avatron.AVExFramebuffer Version: 1.7

org.virtualbox.kext.VBoxDrv Version: 4.2.4

org.virtualbox.kext.VBoxUSB Version: 4.2.4

org.virtualbox.kext.VBoxNetFlt Version: 4.2.4

org.virtualbox.kext.VBoxNetAdp Version: 4.2.4

Problem System Launch Daemons:

Problem System Launch Agents:

Launch Daemons:

[loaded] com.adobe.fpsaud.plist

[loaded] com.displaylink.usbnivolistener.plist

[loaded] com.fitbit.fitbitd.plist

[loaded] com.github.GitHub.GHInstallCLI.plist

Launch Agents:

[loaded] com.adobe.CS5ServiceManager.plist

[loaded] com.displaylink.useragent.plist

User Launch Agents:

[loaded] com.facebook.videochat.sanford.plist

[loaded] com.google.GoogleContactSyncAgent.plist

[loaded] com.hp.printerAgent.plist

[loaded] com.macpaw.CleanMyMac.helperTool.plist

[loaded] com.macpaw.CleanMyMac.trashSizeWatcher.plist

[loaded] com.macpaw.CleanMyMac.volumeWatcher.plist

User Login Items:

Flux

Alfred

3rd Party Preference Panes:

Air Display Preferences

DeployStudioServer

DivX

Flash Player

Flip4Mac WMV

Growl

MenuMeters

Perian

Web Sharing

Internet Plug-ins:

AdobePDFViewer.plugin

DivXBrowserPlugin.plugin

Flash Player.plugin

FlashPlayer-10.6.plugin

Flip4Mac WMV Plugin.plugin

Google Earth Web Plug-in.plugin

googletalkbrowserplugin.plugin

iPhotoPhotocast.plugin

JavaAppletPlugin.plugin

npgtpo3dautoplugin.plugin

OfficeLiveBrowserPlugin.plugin

OVSHelper.plugin

QuickTime Plugin.plugin

Silverlight.plugin

User Internet Plug-ins:

Anystream.plugin

CitrixOnlineWebDeploymentPlugin.plugin

fbplugin_1_0_3.plugin

Picasa.plugin

WebEx64.plugin

Bad Fonts:

None

Top Processes by CPU:

3% DisplayLinkManager

3% WindowServer

2% EtreCheck

1% DashboardClient

1% fontd

1% SystemUIServer

0% Finder

0% Flux

0% mds

0% zdd

Top Processes by Memory:

262 MB mds

131 MB WindowServer

98 MB Dock

49 MB com.apple.dock.extra

49 MB DisplayLinkManager

49 MB mysqld

49 MB Finder

49 MB Google

33 MB java

33 MB coresymbolicationd