The pins in your second picture are the caliper slide pins. I just cleaned mine up with some emory paper, cleaned up the slide grooves in the caliper and bracket, lubricated the pins and the grooves with caliper grease and drove them back in.
Your picture of the pads looks very familiar. Pretty sure mine were tapered on the leading and trailing edges too. The taper is visible in your picture on the axle side of the pads and the pads were made that way. this taper is not due to wear, as it is impossible to wear pads to produce that type of taper. As long as the remaining pad thickness is not tapered from the leading to the trailing edge you are OK. If they are significantly tapered, a caliper piston or slide may have been sticking. In the second from last picture in my original post, you can see that the thickness remaining on my old pads has essentially no difference from one end to the other.
