Very funny the Pi chip. My experience is the same, until recently Poloniex was always very fast, and reliable. I used to stay on the site for hours at a time. Now I'm sure they will build up their capacity especially since, as you say, they are doing well and getting paid.
When I ran into the slowdown, I just backed off, signed off and didn't try to stay on it. Let the important business clear. Then when I wanted to make a trade, I tried to do it during off hours for the US. Works for me. If you want to trade all day every day, well you're either a high pro or simply a bobo in a manic state!
I actually use the same tactic, and I have had to modify my strategies and tactics since the beginning of the slowdown. One of my favorite and most successful strategies has always been playing the spread and consistently taking small profit margins off of many trades. Due to the issues with Poloniex recently this strategy is simply not effective using my current hardware. I am honestly still very suprised by the fact that they didn't have a more scale-able solution for times such as this.
Well yes, but you've got to admit it has gone parabolic and exponential just in the last month or so. We knew it was going to happen but timing is the hardest to predict.
At first slowly and then suddenly the time is NOW! Now I see why you're calling for that stability to come back. It's that same race for high frequency trading, HFT is it (?) as the stock exchanges.