At 59, I'm building software.
If you'd told me that 25 years ago, I would have laughed. Back then, I was convinced computers had already left me behind.
1999: Picking the Hard Path by Accident
I was a cabinet maker in Illinois. I worked with my hands. Computers were something other people understood — younger people, people who'd grown up with them. The internet was exploding, everyone was talking about the future, and I felt like a spectator watching a parade I'd never be part of.
Then I stumbled onto Geocities.
I don't remember why I wanted to build a website. Curiosity, probably. The platform gave me two options: a WYSIWYG editor (visual, drag-and-drop) or "bare-bones HTML."
I had no idea what HTML meant. I clicked it anyway.
What I saw was a wall of incomprehensible text. Angle brackets, slashes, words that looked like code because they were code. I backed out immediately.
But something stuck. A few days later, I found a tutorial online. Step by step, it walked through what those tags actually did. How <b> made text bold. How <a href> created a link. How the pieces fit together into something a browser could render.
I followed along. I built a page. And somewhere in that process — maybe the first time I hit refresh and saw my changes appear on screen — I realized something:
I actually enjoy this.
That discovery reshaped how I think about learning. I'd assumed I was too late. That the window had closed. But the truth is simpler: there's always an entry point. The "computer movement" hadn't left me behind — I just hadn't found my way in yet.
I believe that's still true today. Anyone, from nearly any background, can get ahead if they're willing to apply themselves. The tools are more accessible than ever. The only barrier is the decision to start.
2000–2018: The Cabinet Vision Education
That same curiosity led me deeper into technology — specifically, into Cabinet Vision: the design and manufacturing software that powers thousands of cabinet and millwork shops.
I'd started as a user, learning CV as a cabinet maker. In 2000, I joined the company.
What followed was an 18-year education I never could have planned.
2000–2003: Tech Support, Alabama
I relocated from Illinois to Alabama as a single father with my daughter. My job was tech support and forum moderation — helping users troubleshoot problems, answering questions, building documentation. I was good at it.
But in 2003, I made a hard decision. I needed to be closer to family — for my daughter's sake. I left Cabinet Vision and moved back to Illinois.
2004–2005: They Asked Me Back
A year later, CV reached out. They wanted me to train users — as a self-employed contractor, traveling across the country. I said yes.
I spent that year on the road, working with shops in every kind of setup imaginable. Different workflows, different constraints, different levels of sophistication. It was an education in how the same software could be used in radically different ways.
2005–2010: Charlotte — Building the Curriculum
CV offered me a full-time position at their Charlotte office. I took it.
My role expanded. I was still doing tech support and forum work, but I also became responsible for webinar content — planning it, producing it, delivering it, posting it afterward. During this period, I developed something I'm still proud of: a 15-week online CAD course for Cabinet Vision users.
Building that curriculum taught me something important. Knowing software isn't the same as being able to teach it. I had to break down concepts I'd internalized, sequence them logically, anticipate where people would get stuck. It's a skill set most experts never develop — and it's shaped how I approach training and documentation ever since.
2011–2014: Paris — Training the Trainers
In 2011, Cabinet Vision relocated me to Paris.
For three years, I supported CV resellers across Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and Asia. This wasn't end-user support — I was training the trainers. The people who would go back to their regions and teach others.
Cabinet Vision didn't send just anyone overseas. It was a senior role requiring significant autonomy, cultural adaptability, and deep technical expertise. I saw workflow variations I never would have encountered staying domestic. I learned how different markets approached the same problems.
It was, in hindsight, the most formative chapter of my CV career.
2014–2018: Product Development
When I returned to the US, my role shifted again. I moved into a self-directed product development position, building functional 3D packages in partnership with hardware manufacturers — Blum, Grass, Hettich.
I reached out to these companies directly. I proposed the partnerships. I built the models. It was entrepreneurial work inside a corporate structure, and I loved it.
But by 2018, I could see a gap forming.
There were opportunities CV wasn't pursuing. Ways to modernize workflows, reduce manual entry, make the software more powerful for the shops that depended on it.
Eventually, I made a decision: if these tools weren't going to be built from the inside, I'd build them myself.
2018–2023: The Limits of One-on-One
When I left Cabinet Vision, I was optimistic. I had 18 years of insider knowledge. I knew the software cold. I'd seen every workflow variation across four continents. Surely I could help shops unlock what they were missing.
And sometimes I could.
But not always.
Some clients had their own ideas about how things should work — and stuck to them regardless of what I recommended. Others had buy-in at the top, but employees on the shop floor quietly resisted. Small changes got ignored. Workarounds became permanent. The "old way" persisted because it was familiar.
I'm not throwing shade at these clients. Their processes made sense at some point. They solved real problems with the tools and knowledge available at the time.
One shop had spent years using Excel to generate G-code for their point-to-point machine. By the time I got there, their entire CV infrastructure had been built around that workaround — redundant steps, confusing logic, and a P2P machine running at a fraction of its potential. Cabinet Vision could have handled this natively, more efficiently, with far less confusion. But the Excel process was embedded. It was how things were done.
Another shop had forced CV to mirror their manual construction methods — because that's how the guys in the shop had always built cabinets. The software was capable of so much more, but it had been constrained to match hand-tool habits.
In both cases, the path forward was clear to me. But clarity isn't the same as implementation. You can't fix culture from the outside. Not really. Not sustainably.
After five years of this pattern, I started asking different questions. Not "how do I help this client?" but "where can my expertise actually move the needle?"
Around the same time, I was thinking harder about the future for personal reasons. I have progressive hearing loss — something I've managed throughout my career. It's not getting better, but I've adapted. I've learned sign language. I've watched Deaf friends navigate a hearing world with confidence, ordering food at restaurants, conversing comfortably with anyone. That experience was empowering. Deafness in a hearing society isn't easy — but it's not to be feared.
That perspective shaped how I thought about work. Consulting requires constant verbal communication — calls, meetings, real-time problem-solving. I can do that now. But I've chosen to build something that doesn't depend on it. Software scales differently. The impact lives in the tool, not in my availability.
That's not a backup plan. It's a deliberate choice.
The Return: Building What Was Missing
The skills I'd picked up in 1999 — the HTML, the curiosity about how software works — had gone dormant during my CV years. But they hadn't disappeared.
When I started thinking about what to build, I began with a simple, concrete problem: double-entry.
Every shop I'd worked with had the same inefficiency. Customer data lived in a CRM. Job specs lived in Cabinet Vision. And someone — usually the most experienced person in the shop — had to manually retype information from one system to the other. Every time. For every job.
It was slow. It was error-prone. And it was completely unnecessary.
My first instinct was Excel. I tried to generate the XML that Cabinet Vision needed using spreadsheets. It was clunky. Frustrating. I kept hitting walls.
Then it dawned on me: why not do this in HTML?
Those skills I'd picked up in 1999 — the ones that had gone dormant for nearly two decades — suddenly had a purpose. I wasn't starting from zero. I was picking up where I'd left off.
So I built a tool. An XML generator that could pull data from external sources and import it directly into Cabinet Vision using CV's native import functionality. No rekeying. No transcription errors. Just clean data transfer.
It worked. And people wanted it.
That project became the foundation of Altonuva LLC — and clarified the mission I've been pursuing ever since:
Build tools that reduce dependency on specialized roles.
I spent years as the expert shops called when they needed help. I valued that work. But I also recognized its limits. I could only help one company at a time. The real impact — the broader, more lasting kind — comes from building systems that scale. Tools that help shops run smoother whether I'm personally involved or not.
That's what I'm building now. That's what Altonuva is for.
Full Circle
25 years ago, I was a cabinet maker who thought he'd missed his chance.
I clicked "bare-bones HTML" on a whim, got overwhelmed, almost gave up — and then found a tutorial that changed my trajectory.
18 years with Cabinet Vision gave me something I couldn't have acquired any other way: deep, insider knowledge of an industry's workflows, pain points, and unmet needs. I didn't just use the software — I trained people on four continents, built curriculum, developed products, and watched how shops actually operate.
Now I'm back where I started: writing code, building tools, solving problems.
The detour wasn't a detour. It was preparation.
If you're reading this and thinking you've missed your window — that you're too old, too late, too far behind — I'd challenge that assumption. The entry points are everywhere. They always have been. The only question is whether you're willing to pick the hard path and see where it leads.
I did. Twice. I'm glad I did.