Hey Rick,
This track has definite potential. Even though you have only been playing a short time its obvious you have good ideas - from years of listening to 80's shred no doubt;-) You're making great progress re technique for the ammount of time at the axe, that's for sure so I won't comment on your playing - that will develop at the same rate over the coming months.
Re the recording - you said that what you hear from your amp is very different to what gets cut to disk. A couple of things affect the tone through the signal chain. First test is to turn the amp off and plug in your headphones - that is the best monitoring you can get for direct recording. What you hear from your amp is affected by the tone from the amp speaker itself and loads of other things like the room accoustics etc. The only way to get that tone is by micing up. Anyway, you will probably find by direct monitoring that you just need to make some tweaks to the tone settings to get back to what you want.
One thing you should do is download a free drum package (or buy EZdrummer when you can). Untill you get something better a freeware software that does the job and gt me started recording is Hammerhead Studio, get it here:
http://www.threechords.com/hammerhead/
I can hear some intonation issues on your guitar (makes the higher note warble slightly when picked and sustained). Most people have intonation probs though, to get it sorted you should have a guitar shop put on your next set of strings and do a basc setup.
I think this will develop into a nice track, I like the intro minor sounding melody - lots of potential. i would try experimenting with multitracking some open powerchords to ring out below it along with some clean sounding picked chord (like in Metallica's 'Call of Ktulu'). First step is to add the drums though, they will give the track a lot more structure.
You're taste in tones will develop with your playing too - next track you do will more than likely be with completely different settings but the tones there are fine. A tip to get around the intonation probs is to add vibrato to the sustained notes at the beginning. Hope that helps!