Well I've gone more than a day without the problem showing up so perhaps 
I can blame it on the SSD going bad.

I've been running 6.4 with the nouveau drivers, doing a little work, 
adding packages, doing more work and haven't seen the issue.  BUT one 
day without seeing it is not unheard of, rare but I have seen it.

Now my problem is I can't get the nvidia drivers to run but that's 
another thread, starting soon.

Thank you all very much for your help and your patience (nobody accused 
me of spamming the list yet).

I did learn quite a bit about diagnosing flaky systems, it's so much 
easier when something actually fails.

Joe