Miscellanous changes

[tmcnulty387]

What

Small miscellanous changes that don't affect core functionality

• Updated gitignore to ignore .vscode
• Replaced context.TODO() with context.Background()
• Fixed incorrect method names in logs
• Small changes suggested by go compiler
• Added godotenv to automatically load .env if it exists
• Explicitly connect to database from main instead of from database.go

Why

Because why not

Test Plan

go test -v ./... passes and none of the changes affects core functionality

Env Vars

did you add, remove, or rename any environment variables
No

Checklist

• Tested all changes locally

[tmcnulty387]

1 of the changes suggested by compiler was wrong, replacing interface{} with any did break stuff. Reverted that change.