I had to use the "en-UK" for language and that got me all the pending tasks.
But when I tried to claim the task, I got an exception:
org.jbpm.task.service.PermissionDeniedException: User '[User:'joe']' does not have permissions to execution operation 'Claim'
If I comment the claim and just do the start and complete it works ... any thoughts on how one should process tasks programatically ?