Bodging my way through life

After all my issues over the last week dealing with expanding filesystems, I got a treat. My work laptop was originally set up for multiboot, with a 10GB partition each for MacOS, Linux, and Windoze. The rest of the disk was formatted FAT32, which they can all access (Windows offers little choice in this).

I ended up not using multiboot, and running other stuff with VMWare Fusion, but kept running out of space in the MacOS partition, as many things like to be there, and are tricky to relocate. But I had an unused 10GB partition adjacent to it. Any chance I could combine them and expand the HFS+ filesystem to take advantage of the additional space. At first, I started looking for an external drive to stage everything on while I repartition the drive and built new filesystems, but then I remembered I'm using a Mac.

So I went to Disk Utility, combined the partitions, and dragged the filesystem to fill the larger space.

And it worked. While I was using the machine. I magically had 10GB more space, and I didn't have to shut down any programs, log out, reboot, or anything like that. I actually did this while I was chatting with people, and the only bobble was the network connectivity bounced, so I vanished and reappeared a few seconds later.

Now THAT impresses me, all the more so, given my (now) intimate familiarity with the complexity of changing filesystems and partitions. Good on ya, Apple!

I use my cell phone with a car kit to keep it charged and let me control the phone easily. To answer the phone, I just thumb the big button. To adjust the volume, I turn the knob. To make a call via voice dialing, I thumb the big button, wait for the breedle, and say the name I want to call.

However, the phone cares deeply about the state of charge of its internal battery*. Even though it is connected to the car kit, and has a continuous source of power, it worries incessantly about electricity issues. If it gets down to 99% charge, it starts recharging. And when it finishes charging, it notifies me by beeping and displaying a "battery full" message.

To dismiss this helpful and informative message (which appears a few times an hour while driving), I have to open the phone (displaying the same message, and assigning the "OK" function to the "enter" key), and press the (tiny) "enter" key. This is not really something safe to attempt whilst driving.

UNFORTUNATELY, the voice dialing feature is disabled while the phone is in this state. Mashing the big button only results in a disappointed-sounding "boop" noise, with no explanation. This rather defeats the safety and convenience of voice dialing. Bad engineering! No engineering biscuit! Bad Nokia!

I wrote Nokia to complain about this, but their reply only told me that I'm required to "confirm" the "Battery full" message. Fail.

Now, if only there were a nice rugged GSM cellphone with Bluetooth that works well with a car kit and an external antenna jack or coupler.

* Technically, it's a cell, not a battery, but the phone (and most people) refer to it as a "battery", so I will here.