Being very familar with Bryce and Wings 3D, I am having difficulty with the strange interface of Blender. Beyond working with Blender, any suggestions on how to accelerate the acclimatization? (i.e. getting used to the scheme of things)

The Introduction in the User Guide has something of a tutorial with it: Your First Animation in 30 + 30 Minutes. It covers the most used features. Doing that tutorial, and maybe a few more, might help you locate functions and remember where they are in relation to what you want to do on the screen.

Attached Link: http://blender.excellentwhale.com/

Printing out the hotkeys and highlighting the important ones can help, too.

Read the two free ebooks: "Blender Tutorial Guide" "Blender Basics"

I did a search on google for "blender basics" and found good info. Thank you everyone.

a good stiff drink..;) I've heard a rumor, that a 'Wingslike' interface will be coming out 'someday'..I'm tempted to do a tutorial showing how Blender does things, vs Wings, but I'd have to know how myself first..;)

I have tried several interfaces, Bryce, Amapi, World Builder, Terragen, Wings, Blender, etc. After an adjustment to the flavor of the interface, I have found the Wings 3D to be the easiest followed closely by Bryce. My 2 cents worth of opinion! While Blender's interface is a toolbox approach to modeling, it requires too much memorization. It is not "intuitively obvious". What does it take to be "intuitively obvious"? Not use the program for over a year and to be able to jump into the program like you never stopped using it.

Attached Link: http://www.renderosity.com/messages.ez?Form.ShowMessage=2138345

pressing space bar turns up the menu so that might help memorizing, hope you dont forget to push space then to call the menu. i made 3 special beginners tuts for getting into the workflow of blender right in this forum . i asked bart of the blender site to host it but he find them good but not special enough, his own castle tut was lol. try sticking in a little longer and you will be rewarded with a powerfull 3d app. that can do medeling animation softbody and soon liquids do a search on tut or click link for my bigginers tut:)