If you are needing offline activation but can't get it to work this guy has done a good write up here.
As to the Creative Cloud only needing to sign in once a month, that's what I've heard too, but if you have an internet connection active it will sign in anyway just for the heck of it.
That also might cause a problem, albeit probably in about 0.001% of cases. If you have signed in for the month on a network that allows connection to the server, then use your laptop on a network that prevents connection the sign in will fail, possibly preventing you from using the applications. The solution to that would be to unplug from the internet while starting up the apps and because it doesn't see a connection it won't try to connect, allowing the apps to start. Also works for trials in the same case, although obviously it also keeps a record locally of how long the trial has been going for.
