@greghollowell I am sorry for the troubles. Google Docs Viewer is notorious for the stability issues, especially for Office documents that are hosted elsewhere! Did you try Microsoft Office Viewer? It should be stable and more user-friendly for all the files.
When using the Plus version, we recommend two solutions for stability.
Use Google Drive to host your files – We have hardly seen any downtime for the documents that are embedded in Google Drive
Use Box.com – Box.com has its own viewer. It’s super stable and also comes with various privacy settings.