I had that at my last job!
I was the network admin for about 10 years with the company. As they downsized, I did less IT and more other things, which in the long run wasn't such a bad thing.
But anyway, during the heyday, I too was given all kinds of "new projects" to look into, but we did nothing with them. The management would never invest in anything, period. We were still running NT 4.0 SP6a on a majority of the servers, which at the end were about 11-12 years old. The old Compaq Proliants were still operational (a testament to their quality), but we couldn't replacement them either if anything died.
I too went through skill rot to put it mildly. It's a good thing I took the impetus to go back to school for my IT degree, which I'm still working on today. I felt I had to do something otherwise my brains would rot too.
