Where I work as a teaching technology manager the average age (excluding three 22'ish students we employ as part time helpdesk phone support) is about 40. Due to streamlining (AKA downsizing AKA hacking the guts out of IT staff) all the lower (and younger) level staff were laid off as senior (non IT) management decided that with all the automation in deployment and basic systems management they were not needed.

Now we had the exact same "issue" as the OP talks about... but this was 3 years ago with our labs - new machines running XP... it took us (well me) about 10 minutes to resolve this - from first principals of fault diagnosis to workout it was some sort of "firmware" issue, discover that the BIOS had UEFI enabled, remember an article I read some months back and 30 seconds of googling to find a site with similar information. we resolved the situation faster than you could say "Useless old codgers".

Last year we were assigned management of a lab that was still running an antique XP image with a very old version (6?) of Internet explorer. after remotely updating and patching the lab we almost immediately had some young programer (maybe 25 and only 4 years out of his ComSci degree) on the phone blasting us because all the teaching delivery software he wrote (including some new stuff he was just testing when we updated the lab) wouldn't run under later versions of IE.
it's not so much a case of old dogs not learning new tricks but you find that a lot of people (some "old" but many not much out of their ComSciDegree) not bothering to adapt to new technologies and resources. No doubt I could have lived out my working days programming in COBOL and CICS ending up winding down to retirement in some Banking/Government legacy support consultancy roll (actually that wouldn't have been bad financially - they earn good money) But screw that, that's not why I got interested in IT in the first place.

All the best vampire hunters are vampires ... and by best I mean the one not mentioned in the polls Royal Order of Protestant Knights' (AKA the Hellsing Organization) Alucard.

these days, just my drivers license, work ID and often my passport, pretty much just the minimum (though technically we don't have to carry our drivers license even when driving but in the event of being asked for it due to traffic offence it must present to a police station it within a few (I forget) days of being requested it by the police officer)

Many year's back (in the 80's) before my IT career one of my jobs was as a bonded courier working between a number of inter-owned security/transport firms, so there were ID's for each of those companies, certain photo ID/documents relating to insurance, police clearance, and several certain clients required me to have a photo ID created by their own corporate security... I think at one point I counted no less than 15 photo ID cards & documents relating to this job... and certain courier jobs would be accompanied with a once off photo ID card.... plus there was the absolutely essential current and valid passport (as our drivers license at that time didn't have a photo so was not considered valid ID for that sort of work).

Three valve/tube loaded guitar and bass amps means I've got a dozen or so "Dinosaurs" living in my lounge room. Not like they are relics either two of the amps are post 2000 designed and built units (Blackstars).

ditto, except that Earl Grey actually is my poison of choice when it comes to hot Camellia beverages.
Then once in the office it's coffee as a proper coffee maker and good beans are one of the few luxuries lavished upon the wage slaves there (if it was instant, or even worse, drip filter, even I'd be tempted to use the generic brand tea bags (which, for some reason can only be brewed at slightly brown flavourless weak or stomach turning nauseously strong English guest house "cuppa cha") .

In part I agree text/chat/remote access programs all cut down telephone support time but these days I usually find I'm spending as much on V&VoIP on our internal user support as on the phone. Some users just want it fixed (remote access), other users want to be told what I'm doing as I fix it (remote access and voice) , others want me to tell them how to fix it and having a web cam and or mic can be handy when it's helping them use a peripheral device.

na sorry I was under post dental surgery painkiller when I first posted that - spillen and gramhar kin gogh rit out the windoz undr that hsit.

well round these parts saying "would you like to sample my jello" will probably get you, at best, strange confused looks and maybe a slap or two in the face from people who think your being obtusely vulgar. we call it Jelly... we'll maybe even sing a jingle as we tuck in to our raspberry jelly desert "I like Aeroplane Jelly, Aeroplane Jelly for me." and what you lot foolishly call jelly - we call that jam... so you'd be a bit of a dill putting jelly on a doughnut but a spot of strawberry jam would be just the thing

what the eff heck is a frikin Jacuzzzi whatsit? ...google google ooogle... oh it's a "spa" bath. well.... who'd have known...

don't need religion for this... people have done, do do, and will continue to do evil things, hate each other and infringe upon peoples rights for things both more abstract than religion (e.g.. patriotism) and more concrete than religion (e.g. the all mighty dollar).
Sometimes they will even do these things (and more) for these reasons (and more) and use the excuse that it was done because it was Gods/The Gods will.
As an atheist I'm frequently disappointed at the petty evils done by other of my non existant creed

Can't ride my motorcycle in my gym shoes (and anybody, and I mean _ANYBODY_, who says otherwise has never gotten their shoe laces caught in the footpegs hero blobs)
Can't do a gym workout in my steel cap work boots (even if I was to try they would kick me out of the gym)
Can't really wear my old hiking boots with my suit for my day job (dress standards are low enough at a university I'm trying to lift them not sink in to the same sloppy joe and sneaker mire as the undergrads and the lecturers)
Can't unload a truck in my leather dress shoes (it may be "only" my second job but it pays the rent and I'd like to keep it and that means wearing appropriate safety kit)
Can't hike in my Motorcycle boots... no really, these boots WERE NOT made for walking.
And I do so like my brogues when I'm tweeding out.
and my 27 year old 12 hole Doc's, well you can bury me in them, 'cause otherwise they'll out last me.

this would be not be even remotely difficult ..
I've been reading books from the age of 5 and now, approaching the age of 50, I've certainly read over 10,000 books. I've probably read 90% of the books in my father's library of 3 or 4 thousand books, and at the libraries where I've work for the last 20 plus years I've made a damned good headway in to the asian history, classical history, medieval history, medical, economics, fine arts and architecture sections, there's not many books in the renaissance art shelves that don't have my name on the borrowing record.
I've had days where I've read four, five, six, or even more books. Books like Three Men in a Boat can be read in an hour and a half or so, most of Terry Pratchett's books can be read in a couple of hours, last weekend I reread the entire "swords" series by Fritz Leiber in one day and then read almost half the Sherlock Holmes stories the next day. Hell, I knocked of the 998 page book 1Q94 in less than 36 hours from its release. Of course I don't always read everyday, and when I do holiday traveling I make a point of not doing recreational reading (though I've been known to break this rule).
these days, even on a work day (which being two jobs is usually about 15 hours long for me) I can read through a small book each day or two and then knock of 3 to 5 books on a weekend.
Of course I hardly ever watch tv or play video/computer games... and when I do I've usually got a book or two open at the time. Mostly I just sit with music on and read

yeh me too... my northern hemisphere friends decided I was completely loopy when I started shouting "wow! look at those white swans! they are WHITE!!!" ... then I started chasing after and taking pictures of them (much like how my ex reacted when she saw squirrels in the US... again her american friends thought she had lost her mind) .
But lets face it white swans look all strange.. they are all small and delicate looking things compared to a good old robust Swan River black swan that won't just stare you down but give you a goosing even a goose would be proud of.
But I guess we both had a "white swan moment" which is a "black swan moment" for people who only had seen black swans.

on both my motorcycle or my 4WD's economy, once taken over around 80KPH, ceases to deliver the sort of milage the manufacturers claim... the 4WD is rated at around 16 litres per hundred Klm for "highway driving" yet driven conservatively at the hwy limit of around 100 to 110KPH only delivers 19 to 20 litres per 100Klm, a considerable loss of "economy" over the marketing figures, my motorcycle (a 650 single) shows a smaller but still significant drop in economy once taken past 80KPH.
Also not sure where the writer lives that driving under 50MPH would result in "constantly impeding" one's "fellow drivers" but where I live the only time, on an average drive you'd get to do 80+ KPH (50 MPH) in any sort of car, would be for the split second before you ploughed in to the back of the car in front doing 60Kph or less (usually much much less, just like all the other cars in front of, and around, them).
My GPS readings for the last year show that (apart from occasional rural or off peak freeway driving) my total time spent over 80KPH was less than 2 hours of about 6000Klm worth of urban driving.
While I'm not convinced that current hybrids are viable when calculating purely personal economics just because they may (or may not) fit in with the driving requirements of one small stretch of the road doesn't mean they fail in a other markets. I could imagine the author would rather die than drive a Smart but in places like Rome and Tokyo these small kei cars and their slightly larger cousins are the most practical cars the road and yes I've bombed a 1.3liter generation 1 Nisan Cube up Hokunku Expressway 500Klm plus Kyoto to Niggata and have driven a Daiwoo Matiz much the same distance Perth to Geraldton so I know they are not perfect cars for open hwy driving but then again most, probably all, of the big full sized cars are as far from ideal urban commuters as you can get (short of a Hummer), which lets face it - what probably 90% of us spend 95% of our driving doing is slow stop start commuting.

was it read to you before, or after "Ethel the Aardvark Goes Quantity Surveying"?