Noob soldering help: test pad repair
I'm a pretty new electrical engineer, but I do a decent amount of soldering at work (I work as a test engineer and I have to layout PCBs for testing a myriad of electronics).
Depending on the frequency of the trace, lifting a pad can mean a new board for me. But if these are just test points (which I agree I think they are) and you don't know where they lead to, then you couldn't get any use out of them anyway... so I wouldn't sweat it.
As far as fixing lifted pads, I think the best bet is to try and flow solder into the pad area. Make sure the solder is also connected to the incoming trace. You should scratch some of the soldermask away from the trace to ensure a good connection. It's not nearly as nice, and you will burn the dielectric doing it. And if its a trace carrying a +100MHz signal I would be very wary.