Well, I changed the turntable to trackball... or trackball to turntable... I forget, but I did find the user preferences and changed how the mouse moves. So now it's more like Maya which, although I've never used it, seems to be a lot easier to control.

I've also learned to select the vertices, although I'm still having trouble moving them where i want.

Man, this thing makes Shade look like a child's toy.