I finally found a way (thanks to Sphinct0r, who really, really needs a new handle) to resize the partitions of my harddrive so that I can upgrade my OS to Vista. I'm using a bootable GParted CD which seems to be doing the trick. The problem is that I had to resize down the second partition, then move it into the free space in order to upsize the first partiton. It's taking a helluva lot of time to move 70 gigs.
Once it's done, I'll increase the boot partition, but while that's running I will be hard at work examining the backside of my eyelids.
Luckily for me, my wife is watching American Idol so I have free reign of her laptop.
Just got to remember to clear out her surfing history before I turn it off ;-)