I have sold 250 bitcoins over the last 8 years? Something like that.

Yes, they are slow. If you up your fee when sending coins, the network may actually give you the first confirmation within 20 minutes. If you give them a 'Western Union' size fee, then bitcoin will work as it used to - all done in 20 minutes.

This was an expected and well anticipated affect of adoption.

See the 300k or so unconfirmed transactions in real time

I normally check the unconfirmed tx via blockchain.info on this link: https://blockchain.info/unconfirmed-transactions