...why are you all doing this? He's not going to see it. Besides, it's off-topic since this Michael Portnay guy isn't even in Dream Theater.
We are the biggest dedicated online Dream Theater community on the internet - DT being the band that took up 25 years of his life. Member or no, I'm sure he's got at least a passing interest in what we have to say, and while he probably won't come here
often, he almost certainly drops by now and then.
I doubt he'll spend his birthday here, and he's got way too much stuff on his plate right now to be wasting his time reading our inane gibberings. For all we know, this won't get read at all, but it's not exactly sending messages into space.
'Specially seeing as it's his first birthday since he left the band - I quite like the idea of showing that even though he's not in the band any more, he's still an important bloke to us and we wish him well.