Thank you both.

What Oldschoolpunk says is basically what I know about Y and Z screen coordinates. I've toyed around with Wings, Maya PLE, and Gmax and they all have Y as up and  Z as depht. My face starts to twitch when I even think of switching between blender and another app.

Heck, even middle school math teaches X as horizontal and Y as vertical for graphing lines and equations. :cursing:

Just when I was starting to like Blender. Oh, well... at least there's Local Orientation combined with running a script in my brain's OS called Ignore Global Widget (and supress any urge to enter XYZ numbers by hand). :crying: