Yeah, I figured that it was just changing the time, I figured it's probably more a frustration generator than a placebo, programmers get to torture people too.The buttons used to check for updates are placebos. The phone will check on it's own once a day...there is no way to force it to check more often. The button does not even bother asking anyone...when you click it, it will just change the time to whatever the current time is. The button lies.
Do not need to be rooted or unlocked to sideload official updates. But it will definitely wipe your data. And you will need to do it via fastboot from a PC.
How to manually update Nexus 5 to Android 4.4.3 KitKat