I want to add my voice to those thanking Drugmonkey today. I started reading Drugmonkey when I was Director of NIGMS at NIH. While the blog could certainly be a bit strident, the author was generally more well informed about NIH policies, practices, and realities than almost anyone that I had met either inside or outside NIH. Over time, I started to comment on Drugmonkey posts when I thought I could add something to the discussion. This experience led me to start reading other blogs and this, in turn, let me to work with the excellent communications staff at NIGMS to launch the NIGMS Feedback Loop just in time for the ARRA funding chaos. Drugmonkey was very encouraging of this effort and we became frequent cross-commenters.
After I left NIGMS, I remained interested in blogging and was delighted when Drugmonkey and his/her colleagues at Scientopia invited me to join. After some time for consideration, Datahound was born. As this post indicates, Datahound is still alive and well although I am spending much of my blogging time at my newest blog Sciencehound. I greatly appreciate the personal, if mostly indirect, mentoring I have received from Drugmonkey as well as the service Drugmonkey provides to the scientific community in general (especially early career folks). Thanks!