What would you do?

I recently started doing IT work for a new company and things were going good but now I find myself spending most of my work day with little or nothing to do to pass the time and it has me worried.

Now before I begin I want to take a non-modest second to say that I am the kind of worker a company would love to have in their employment. I do not like down time. I find a productive work day to go faster and be more rewarding in the long run and because of that I am not content to sit around and pass the time with trivial things. Having said that my new job seems to offer me very little.

Like most IT workshops I spend my time waiting for a ticket to come my way so I can do my IT magic and solve a problem. Usually when these do come through it is because somebody had unplugged their mouse or ran out of toner and needs help to fix the small problem. So I fix it and go back to my desk to wait for more. This is where my problems begin.

In an economy that is just starting to get back on its feet a non working employee is very expendable especially a new non working employee. Couple that with the fact that every time I attempt to go out of my way to help other people or create work for myself I get a response from the management as if I am doing something wrong and should only do the work to which I am assigned. Now add that to a strict computer usage policy that does not allow us to use the internet for anything not company related (Email, chat, leasure web surfing, etc..)

So now I feel as if I should sit here and not do anything personal while not trying to make work for myself and trying to look busy because no real work is being assigned. So what would you do in this case?