A couple weeks ago I had to call SharePoint user profile properties using code. However, it took me quite some searching to make it work properly (but that might just be me?).
Anyway, I thought I'd just share the snippet with the rest of the world, so here you go 
using System.Web;
using Microsoft.SharePoint;
using Microsoft.Office.Server.UserProfiles;
using Microsoft.Office.Server;
namespace Nick.Blog
{
public class RequestUserProfile
{
public UserProfile GetUserProfile()
{
using (SPSite site = new SPSite("http://myserver.com"))
{
using (SPWeb web = site.OpenWeb())
{
ServerContext context = ServerContext.GetContext(web.Site);
UserProfileManager upMgr = new UserProfileManager(context);
UserProfile profile = upMgr.GetUserProfile("accoutName");
return profile;
}
}
}
}
}
You'll probably need to run this code in Elevated privileges, as not everyone can call another user's profile, but I guess you get to the point with this one …
Having this profile, you can request all kinds of information from the user, including custom defined properties of the user profile.
Hope it helps someone 
nsevens