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 Meet The Site Designer
By Marc "Devil Dog Of The Web" Iseli / Updated Dec. 2025
Strap in, devil dogs, because this is the
tale of how a recce grunt with more cami
stains than computer skills stumbled into
the glamorous world of website design, and
why I decided the internet needed a shrine
to the finest squadron the Marine Corps tried
to forget. Stick around, it gets weirder.
In 1999, I marched into Walmart and liberated
an HP computer from the electronics aisle,
armed with zero knowledge and a credit card.
My mother had just passed, and my father
was wandering around the house like a lost
RSO looking for the O Club. I figured the
best way to keep him out of trouble was to
rope him into a project. After wrestling
with AOL dial-up (the sound of freedom, if
freedom was a dying dial tone), I discovered
people were hawking their homemade wares
online. My old man had a workshop full of
sawdust and questionable safety practices,
so I pitched him on starting a woodworking
racket. We called it Spruce Caboose, because
nothing says "high-speed, low-drag"
like wooden toy trains.
I wanted to slap some pictures of our wooden
masterpieces online, but building a website
felt like trying to preflight an F-4 with
the manual written in Klingon. Turns out,
there were a million outfits promising to
help clueless folks like me. I picked one
run by folks helping military families, 3,000
miles away, but who's counting? They got
me squared away enough to peddle our crafts.
Late at night, while the rest of the world
was sleeping or at least pretending to, I
noticed veterans scattered all over the web,
posting SOS signals looking for old squadron
buddies. That’s when the lightbulb flickered:
why not build a digital hooch just for VMFP-3?
By then, I’d bought some bargain-bin software
and cobbled together a site that looked like
it was built by a drunken Jarhead on a four-day
weekend.
I cobbled together a few pages, photos of
my glory days, squadron history, and the
usual sea stories. I wanted a spot for other
vets to sound off, but the tech was about
as user-friendly as a DI at zero-dark-thirty.
So I reached out to the company, told them
I was a VMFP-3 alum, and asked for backup.
A few days later, I get an email from the
head honcho himself. Turns out, he was a
fellow Rat Pack member, GySgt. BJ Chadduck,
MOS 6485 ECM Tech, same years and everything.
At that point, I figured the universe was
giving me a green light, so the RF-4B Phantom
II Society taxied onto the runway. The site
took off faster than a Phantom on afterburner
and held its own on the wild web until 2008,
when the economy nosedived harder than a
boot at his first PFT. Housing market crashed,
banks imploded, and my little corner of the
internet went down with the ship.
Now I’m firing up a new site, call it a digital
liberty port, where we old salts can dodge
the doom and gloom and swap stories without
tripping over the manure that is currently
going on in our county. I’ve come a long
way since the days of dial-up and clip art,
and now I even make my own graphics, or a
few five-finger discounts. The theme? Pure
80s, because that’s when the Rat Pack was
in full mischief mode. I checked into VMFP-3
in January 1980, so I’ve got the inside scoop
on all the shenanigans. Climb aboard and
let’s relive the glory days of pink bellies,
bad haircuts, and more SNAFU your stomach
can handle.
Semper Gumby!!!
Alright, you glorious Rat Phixers and Phlyers,
if we ever survived a TAD, a Det, or a BOHICA,
who haven't, and you didn’t think I was the
biggest gaff off in the squadron. Got a sea
story, or some grainy photos your ex didn’t
set on fire, and they’re only slightly illegal?
Send ‘em by email, snail mail, or safety
wire it to a carrier pigeon. I collect ‘em
all, just nothing that would incriminate
me.
80svmfp3@gmail.com
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