Or am I being overly grumpy because my machine broke and now I'm down till some kind soul sends me new carriages?  8*)

No worries Mr smith sometime we just need to rant.  The time of year for Cabin fever and  needing to vent some steam.

May be I am fortunate . I purchased a USED sd4 so no need to worry about a warantee. I have operated and built a couple cnc machines have a couple Associate degrees and like to tinker. I have a mechanical and electronics background.  So 3d works for me.
3D printing has been in use by industry for 20-25 years or so.  And there has been no problem taking the concept of a $20k machine  and building a home consumer model for about $ 2k. But then you try to build one with a retail  tag of $ 500 the fun begins. 
As far as prints sticking I have never had a problem. I print with pla use a $3 piece of window glass and aquanet hair spray.
Tin

And the software, don't get me started!  Read the instructions for firmware updates, they are daunting to computer geeks, much less someone who thinks they are buying something that'll print out of the box.  I'm afraid to upgrade my slicer, because it's not clear if I'll have to re-enter all the critical parameters, which (oh), no-one knows.

Tweak the temperature, the supplier, the material, the operating environment, add fans to this and desiccants to that and a spool holder that works and a dust cleaner/lube sponge and your machine will still go berzerk when you try to print something 6x6 on an 8x8 bed.  Clogged nozzle?  Don't try to fix it yourself, you'll void the warranty, buy a new one.  And it ships in less than a week, yay!  And it comes with the wrong connectors.  So another week goes by and now I'm awaiting the connectors, but since I don't have an order number, I can't even tell if they've shipped.

Print's don't stick?  Sand the Kapton, clean the Kapton, slather the Kapton with ABS slurry till the prints stick.  Then you can't get them off without destroying the Kapton.  Which is $20/sheet and takes TWO WEEKS between order acceptance and shipping.

Print 4 of something?  Sure, just lay out four and it works fine!  Print 12 of them?  Sure, just lay out a bed-full and you'll break the filament (consistently) partway through the print.

I've printed a few things that have been _wonderful_, and a few things that have been useful (Thank You Thingiverse!) but I feel like this whole industry is still in the garage shop/hobbyist phase.

OK, my bad for buying the cheap/inexpensive toy model, now that I see the promise of it, let's buy the good one, money is no object.  Read the reviews, and my SD4 turns out to be one of the good ones.  Everyone has the same issues.  If you are a hobbyist and this is what you want to spend your time on then you are on the bleeding edge, where it's actually pretty interesting.

If you are a normal person (whatever that is, and I'm certainly not) you're never going to be able to make this technology work in it's current incarnation.  Yeah, you can go down to Staples or Home Depot or Best Buy and drop a grand (or two or three) on a Really Cool Machine, or you can do the mail order thing (or even the Kickstarter thing if you want to, but you'll get more value from dumping a few hundred dollars in small bills into the fireplace kindling cache), but either way you are going to be pulling your hair out, and if you aren't a hobbyist you're going to put it on the shelf with the breadmaker and the fancy coffee machine.

Or am I being overly grumpy because my machine broke and now I'm down till some kind soul sends me new carriages?  8*)