OK, well I gave memtest86 (www.memtest86.com) a shot.  It gets to test 4 (Moving
inv, 32 bit pattern, cached) and after less than 15 minutes of total running
time the system just reboots.  I don't see any error messages popping up on the
screen, so I guess it is safe to assume that the memory is most likely trouble
and the error is fatal.  Guess I need to find the receipt and figure out how to
deal with the lifetime warranty of it to get it replaced (yep Fry's RAM).

Is this a fair assessment?

> > linux) that could do things like test my systems memory for errors to see
> > if that is the culprit.
> 
> Check for memtest. It's in sysutils in debian.
> 
> Other packages:
> 
> bonnie++ - This is Russell Coker's hard drive bottleneck testing program
> crashme - Stress tests operating system stability
> hwtools - Collection of tools for low-level hardware management
> purity - Automated purity testing software.
> purity-off - Sex related purity tests
> 
> Those last two might not be so helpful ;-).
> 
> Info from hwtools:
> 
>   irqtune: adjusts priority of interrupts (improves serial performance),
>   scanport: scans for hardware not already handled by Linux drivers,
>   memtest86: a real mode memory test,
>   memmxtest: another real mode memory test, but with MMX support.