Thanks for all of the replies. I have it fixed. It was not the kernel
itself, but something went awry with the update and a crucial package was
left out after the update. The kernel update necessitated a graphics driver
update and this is where it messed my system up. The package was
xserver-xorg-nv. I am not sure why it happened, but am glad to be back in
business. There were other errors to the file system, but they could have
been created after I did a hard boot when things hung on the first re-boot.
Funny the way one small thing can cause major problems.