Can't create a partition
I realize you have posted your own answer, but others may want to know what was wrong.

Basically, you had journaling turned off. To turn journaling on, you need to highlight the partition and click on the "Enable Journaling" button. To see the change, you may have to quit and reopen the Disk Utility application. 

To turn journaling off, do the following using the Disk Utility application.


Highlight the partition.
Press and hold the "alt/option" key.
From the menu bar select "File->Disable Journaling"
Release the "alt/option" key.
Quit and reopen the Disk Utility


You should alway have journaling enabled for "Mac OS Extended" formatted partitions, but there can be cases where you may want to turn it off. Especially if you are going to be using Linux.  Many linux distributions (like Ubuntu) can read "Mac OS Extended" formatted partitions, but they can only write to them if journaling is turn off. So enabling and disabling journaling may be useful if you need to transfer data from Linux to OS X.